‘Uncharted: Golden Abyss’ (2011)
Many consider the “Uncharted” series, a flagship PlayStation franchise, among the best video games ever made. These playable blockbusters follow charming thief Nathan Drake — descendant of Sir Francis Drake — as he uncovers cities lost to the snows, seas, and sands of time. Drake must reckon with powerful secrets, villains without inside voices, and the burdens of legacy.
If that sounds formulaic, that’s because, to an extent, it is. But the formula averse should probably steer clear of treasure hunts. A characteristic of “Uncharted’s” appeal is its consistency: namely, its authentic approach to story and character. Though Drake shares similarities with the likes of Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, it’s his everyman persona that has won over generations of fans. “Uncharted’s” authenticity is what has earned the series its keep. And a middling film adaptation.
“Golden Abyss,” the oft-forgotten sixth installment, hews to formula, following Drake and mentor Victor Sullivan on a search for the lost city of Quivira. Its obscurity, despite its lauded provenance and quality, is due to its platform. Where its siblings were launched on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, “Golden Abyss” has only ever been released on the unsuccessful handheld PlayStation Vita console, making the means to simply play it the prohibitive part for most.
Having bought a Vita primarily to play “Golden Abyss,” I can attest it lives up to its predecessors in quality. Nowadays, people can most practically play the game on PC via Vita emulator.
I consider “Golden Abyss” a lasting reminder that despite the ugliness of the world and the most existential and vitriolic of our modernities, there is always meaning past that endless horizon. The infinity of the human experience, of lives past and yet to come, must entail constants innumerable, like beauty, mystery, and love. “Golden Abyss” — and by extension, “Uncharted” as a whole — reminds me why this world is worth living in.
Playing “Golden Abyss” on a Vita lets you fit all that in a pocket! Or perhaps some manner of crucible.
‘Blood & Treasure’ (2019-22)
Due to the impracticality of high budgets, location shoots, and spades of action, treasure hunt adventures don’t tend to marry well with modern TV. The few shows that do make it to air vary wildly in quality, rarely lasting multiple seasons, making those that truly embody the genre often hard to recommend. “Blood & Treasure,” while short-lived like its peers, manages to traverse this particular rickety bridge, delivering a two-season romp that will leave you wishing it had stuck around for more.
“Blood & Treasure” plays its main characters safe and lets its actors give their time-tested genre archetypes life. The leads — initially opposed, or with a history, or both — are united in goal via circumstance. By the end of the show, you can see neither heels nor head of a chance they aren’t in love. “Blood & Treasure” does not harbor ambitions of breaking this mold. Nor, necessarily, should it, especially not when what it does harbor is blistering chemistry between its leads. Matt Barr and Sofia Pernas, who play lawyer Danny McNamara and thief Lexi Vaziri respectively, are a jackpot combination. Danny and Lexi’s romantic history is nothing short of complicated — and I’d have it no other way. Their banter is enlivened with airy familiarity that blossoms into rekindled romance and provides the show with a veritable beating heart.
Wisely, “Blood & Treasure” follows the path well trod by adventures past and populates its supporting and guest roles with pitch-perfect character actors. The likes of James Callis, Michael James Shaw, and Byron Mann clap ostentatious hands to rudder, navigating treacherous waters of exposition with carefree aplomb. Such waters are a necessity of the format — it’s hard to build episodic treasure hunts toward an overarching story without a few info dumps. The production value more than makes up for this shortcoming, particularly in the second season’s stunning location shoots. Though it’s by no means perfect, among its peers on the list, “Blood & Treasure” perhaps most embodies the moral to most of these stories — that true treasure can sometimes come from the most unlikely places. In this case, CBS, originally.
And while “Blood & Treasure” spent its first few years of life languishing on various low-rent streamers, it moved with its second season to Paramount+, marking something of a happy ending for the show.
‘Armour of God II: Operation Condor’ (1991)
This relatively standalone follow-up to “Armour of God” — remembered, peculiarly, as Jackie Chan’s attempt at Indiana Jones, though this is closer in spirit and story — is a hell of a romp for people who enjoy watching other people follow old maps. Chan plays the tragically-named Asian Hawk, a daredevil treasure hunter who seems magnetized to breakable surfaces.
Like most of Chan’s films in his prime, the plot is loose pretext meant to flavor a series of gleefully ridiculous brawls. Even without grading on that curve, there’s enough coherence here to appease fans who may not derive joy from acrobatic fits of violence; they even found a few plot twists in the budget. Hawk, too, is thinly defined, but Chan’s outrageous charisma buoys the character through his search for World War II treasure.
The film — like most of Chan’s oeuvre and the moniker of Asian Hawk — does have a few elements that certainly haven’t gotten better with age, particularly its treatment of its female characters.
With that sizable caveat, though, on thrills alone, I’m hard pressed to think of a more lockjaw-curative adventure film that doesn’t start with“Indiana Jones and the” and end with John Williams’ “Raiders March.” The third act is the age-old dopamine delivery system known as Sheer Lunacy — trust me, I’m a psychology major — in which Chan and playmates ricochet from girder to wind turbine with maniacal vim.
You’ll be left gasping, “I can’t believe no one died!” — the bloopers over the credits will reveal that many very nearly did. They truly don’t make them like this anymore, and while that’s probably for the best, I’m beyond grateful that they once did. Just in case this wasn’t sounding on-brand enough, “Operation Condor” is best watched in its longer Hong Kong cut, if you can find it.
