‘Borderlands’ Movie Review: A Joyless, Irritating Video Game Adaptation
Photo from Lionsgate
From Jeremy Kibler
Here is a prime example of why not every popular video game needs to be adapted into a movie. Based on a series of first-person shooter games, Borderlands is dismal any way you slice it. Take away the source material completely and director Eli Roth’s aggressively snarky sci-fi action fantasy looks and feels like a sub-par hodgepodge of spare parts from Guardians of the Galaxy and Suicide Squad (and not the good one by James Gunn). For a movie that seems to pride itself on being edgy, irreverent chaos, it’s just noisy, irritating, and a complete misuse of an intriguing motley crew.
What’s Borderlands even about? So glad you asked. The plot is a long treasure hunt for something in a vault on another planet, and it’s a slog getting there. More importantly, it’s about the physically distinct characters who are barely characters at all.
Pouring on the sarcasm and striking a video game avatar pose every chance she gets, Cate Blanchett plays hard-shelled bounty hunter Lilith who wants the contents in a vault. She’s hired by rich corporate mogul Atlas (Edgar Ramírez) to return his daughter, Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), who’s apparently been kidnapped by ex-mercenary Roland (Kevin Hart) and a Bane-like “Psycho” named Krieg (Florian Munteanu). But, of course, to find Tina (who is the key to unlocking that vault), Lilith has to go back to her junky home planet of Pandora and face all of its threats. This ragtag group of antiheroes, also including a wisecracking robot named Claptrap (voiced by Jack Black as an annoying, slapsticky R2-D2) and xenoarchaeologist Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), must get along to complete their fetch quest.
Within the numbingly joyless Borderlands, there are flashes of what could have been a fun, stylish, gonzo, classic rock-filled cousin to Guardians of the Galaxy. An intergalactic adventure with giant monsters and a desert full of urine should be weirder and far more entertaining. As is, director Roth and co-writer Joe Crombie’s script is jokey and unctuous without ever being as funny as they want it to be. Even the production design, while occasionally popping with color, uses a lot of the same grungy warehouses and fakey styrofoam sets, leaving one to wonder if its approximate $115-million budget went entirely toward the cast.
Blanchett clearly had enough fun making The House With a Clock in Its Walls with director Eli Roth (and returning co-star Jack Black, who’s now relegated to a sound booth), and we had fun watching her fend off evil pumpkins with a purple umbrella laser blaster. Without being there, it’s impossible to say what this set was like, but Blanchett is at least game. While it is admittedly a kick to watch one of our best actors play a cool, fiery red-haired action heroine with enough no-nonsense attitude in her strut, Lilith’s characterization begins and ends with swagger and sarcasm. Oh, and she has Mommy Issues (along with a late-film revelation that’ll make you think of Dark Phoenix for the first time since 2019). Ultimately, giving the viewer a reason to care about any of these colorful, obnoxiously quippy and depressingly one-note characters is beyond any of the actors’ talents.
As the heavily armed, stuffed-animal throwing Tina, Ariana Greenblatt is allowed to bring the most bouncy, demented energy as a petulant brat, standing out among the bunch. The part of Roland, however, does not suit Kevin Hart’s strengths, so he barely registers. Jamie Lee Curtis, always a joy to see, gets to play Tannis as an oddball who’s possibly on the spectrum. She brings the most humanity out of anybody, but the casting doesn’t really work once we realize she’s supposed to be a former colleague to Lilith’s late mother (Haley Bennett) when there’s only ten years between Curtis and Blanchett. Because she didn’t get much time in Roth’s Thanksgiving but at least went out in gnarly fashion, Gina Gershon also shows up in the red light district as madame Mad Moxxi, which will probably mean more if one actually owns a game console.
If a film could squeak by purely on a cast having gusto, Borderlands still wouldn’t land the ship. The clear sight of an Axe body spray can on top of a bar in this futuristic world is like a microcosm of this sloppy mess of a movie; product placement or not, there’s nothing seamless here. Not a single action set-piece is worth remembering, whether it’s the unimaginative staging, the artless editing, or both. The one-liners clang like Claptrap expelling lead bullets from his rear like a healthy bowel movement. All attempts at emotional arcs ring hollow, failing to make us believe these dysfunctional misfits have become a cohesive found family by the end.
Fans of the video game series can say, “Oh, you don’t play the game, so you don’t get it.” Luckily, you don’t have to have played the game as a prerequisite to understand that the Borderlands movie is soulless, empty, and tiresome.
Rating: 1/5
Borderlands is currently in theaters.
