Uncharted is Raiders of the Lost Ark with thirst traps.

Starring Tom Holland and out in theaters this weekend, Uncharted is a globe-trotting, swashbuckling treasure hunt, and though it began life as an adaptation of a Playstation videogame, it’s a great popcorn movie that almost never slows down once it gets started.

Holland is Nate Drake (as in Sir Francis), a part-time bartender and full-time scoundrel, as adept at picking pockets as he is mixing drinks. He is scouted by Victor “Sully” Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg), a fortune hunter who worked with Nate’s brother Sam, whom Nate hasn’t seen since the two were separated in the Catholic orphanage where they grew up.

Sully and Sam were partners on a hunt for the hidden gold of explorer Ferdinand Magellan until he and Sam had to split up. Sully enlists Nate’s help to find both the treasure and Sam, using clues in an old diary he and Sam acquired. (The details of the treasure hunt aren’t really important, but they do keep the plot moving.)

The first object of their desire is one key to the treasure, an exquisite gold cross that is about to be swooped up by fellow treasure hunter Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas) unless Nate and Sully can make off with it. They fight off Moncada’s right-hand woman Jo Braddock (Tati Gabrielle), a former lover of Sully’s, who they outsmart since they cannot out-fight her.

After they possess the key, they need the other key, so they head to Barcelona where they team up with Chloe (Sophia Ali), an associate of Sully’s who also has an axe to grind with him. They convince Chloe that they should work as a team, and find not the treasure, but Magellan’s original map of the world, which points the way.

From there, it’s basically every person for themselves, as no one is above backstabbing and betraying their teammates to be first to find the gold. (This is where you see how much this movie owes to the Indiana Jones flicks; you can almost hear Belloq telling Indy, “Dr. Jones…again we see there is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away.”)

Still, the similarities to Raiders are immaterial; this movie has its own breath-taking action sequences, like Holland falling out of a cargo plane with no parachute, parkouring his way safely down to the ocean below, and a mid-air pirate ship battle that is rendered in a breath-takingly exciting way.

Holland is delightful as Nate; in this film his wit and earnest appeal (and oft-displayed abs) are just as charming as they are in his Spider-Man movies. Ali and Gabrielle play good foils for good-guy Nate, and even Wahlberg is convincing as an older, wiser, adventurer. Be sure to stay tuned for the mid-credits sequence that suggests something beyond this movie, especially given how good the box office take has been.

This is a movie that has been in development since 2008, when producer Avi Arad decided to adapt the Playstation video game of the same name into a film. Despite a lengthy development process that saw a lot of changes in the writing team, the director and the stars, the end product turned out to be a winner. That the story is slight matters not; the movie should be seen because it is fun, and there’s nothing wrong with fun for fun’s sake, especially when it’s this well-done.