4 out of 5

Label: Sony Classical, Music on Vinyl

Produced by: ?

After a slew of bombastic scores post Game of Thrones, the late 2010s found Ramin figuring in some more experimental notes in his work, harkening back to an earlier era of his compositions, but now sharpened with 15+ years of experience. While this stuff still leans very much into accessibly stirring, driving themes, we can hear Djawadi playing around with finding punctuation in unusual places, and not the “standard” sting of strings and drums. Uncharted wouldn’t seem to lend itself to this, being a high-stakes action flick and coming from an established franchise, but there was something kind of underdog charming about the film, struggling through a long production and a kind of lukewarm reception throughout to make it on screen; while I can’t speak to the movie’s quality as of yet, it presented as kind of an off-brand tentpole – not Marvel, not exactly the Uncharted you wanted – but successful anyway.

And maybe something about this lead-in gives the film’s music some leeway: the opening theme is a stirring romp of horns that nods to the international Indiana Jones vibe of the games, and their rather throwback cinematic scores, though there’s some reticence to it, as the track dodges out of truly big moments. We find this kind of circumventing throughout, and also an interesting combination of the “mundane” – rawly recorded bass, drums – with more typical orchestral elements and some subtle electronic touches, a blend which pretty much didn’t work for Ramin on his Gears 5 score (and there’s some similar production / mixing quibbles on Uncharted, with a soft low end), but is perfectly balanced here. Even when the music feints towards lesser cues, or attempted emotional moments, there are these threads of other, less predictable touches, or little trills of humor. The presumed action sequences are best affected by this, with that opener a good sign: there’s almost always a quirk that makes a theme feel unique to the film.

Past the midsection, we get a little less defined, but peeling into the concluding sequence (from “Flying Galleons” on), the score is very strong. Additionally, while Ramin generally composes full songs and not cues, some of these feel like cues tacked on to songs: the track will start and stop pretty quickly, then pick up some concepts and continue on in a fuller sense.

The tone of Uncharted the movie, from its trailer, very much reminded me of Clash of the Titans: also kind of an off-brand tentpole. Coincidentally, Ramin did the score for that, and it’s one of my favorites of his. I’ve definitely enjoyed much of his work between now and then, but it’s been a while since something felt as fresh as the soundtrack did – Uncharted’s score was a very pleasant surprise.