Borderlands (2024) review

Dir. Eli Roth

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★½

I have never played any of the Borderlands video games, so I am living proof that you can watch the film adaptation and find yourself completely unmoved as well as irritated despite harboring no connection to the source material.

Originally shot in spring 2021, only for reshoots occur two years later, you can practically see the dust blow off of Eli Roth’s Borderlands in the opening minutes. The first Borderlands game was released in 2009, so when this adaptation was greenlit in 2015, the concept didn’t feel as dated as it does more than 15 years after the game that started it all. I feared Lionsgate had an unmitigated mess on their hands they were frantically trying to scrub when, five months ago, I asked Roth to tease the upcoming film, he proclaimed that the powers that be had asked him to keep “tight-lipped.”

Loose lips sink ships, and the recognizable and talented cast of Borderlands has great difficulty swimming out of the wreckage of this (non)-franchise starter. Besides miserably failing to develop the planet of Pandora, its preoccupation with derivative character types, ugly action, and style in search of substance immediately tells an ignoramus such as myself that this couldn’t be faithful to the video game series that has grossed over $1 billion since its inception.

Cate Blanchett — who acted in this before Tár, which doesn’t lessen the delicious irony of Blanchett being in a video game movie, but I digress — stars as Lilith, a Vault-Hunter-turned-body-hunter, who is approached by Atlas (Edgar Ramirez), who wants to find his daughter, Tina (Ariana Greenblatt). Tina has been kidnapped by Roland (Kevin Hart), a rogue soldier, who has taken her to the planet Pandora, along with a brutish “Psycho” named Krieg (Florian Munteanu). How I understand it, “Psychos” in the Borderlands world are insane bandits (i.e. kill fodder) that have grown obsessed with the Vault. You wouldn’t know that watching the film, so there’s some additional context for a nine-figure flick that could’ve used significantly more.

Lilith returns to her home planet and immediately runs into a scrappy, indestructible robot named Claptrap (voiced by Jack Black). More on that hunk of junk in a minute. When these third-rate Guardians of the Galaxy all meet up, they run into more supporting characters such as a researcher named Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Mad Moxxi (Gina Gershon), who help by spouting more drivelous exposition that would make sense if we had a clue what was going on.

Roth and Joe Crombie’s script almost defiantly refuses to make Lilith, Roland, Tannis, and Krieg engaging personalities. They’re so dehumanized, they barely qualify as archetypes. Predictably, this leads to a plethora of middling performances. Blanchett, who has admirably tried to sell the movie in the face of intense criticism, treats this as her Lara Croft role, even walking with the exaggerated, animated swagger of a video game character. She’s all-in, and evidently was in need of a release in lieu of COVID-19 lockdowns. By contrast, Kevin Hart looks like someone who had to postpone a couple of comedy shows in order to be part of the many reshoots (done by Deadpool director/producer Tim Miller, while Roth shot Thanksgiving). It’s strange, although not unwelcome, to see him in a role that mutes his manic comic edge.

Nobody has a worse outing than Jack Black, whose Claptrap character is annoying enough that rebate checks should be given to those who paid $40+ for those popcorn buckets using his likeness. Just went I thought Jacob Batalon’s motor-mouthed moron in Tarot was the year’s most insufferable movie character, enter this rolling rust-bucket who sings whenever he’s performing an action, annoyingly vocalizes every cheap thought he has, and provides the same level of comedy as a first-time stand-up performer sweating his way through a bombed act.

At least Borderlands isn’t cheap-looking. A litany of folks are going to lose a lot of money in their futile attempt to gift this adaptation some visual flare. The creatures, such as a flying dragon and a hungry sandworm, look defined, and the slew of guns and weaponry are delightfully exaggerated in their colors and various uses. However, this is all meaningless with a script that fails to give them a purpose.

Finally, it’s beyond bizarre to see an Eli Roth film where innumerable henchm-err, Psychos, are shot, slashed, maimed, and bombed without a trace of blood or gore. Apparently, the violence was to be a lot more video-game-like, or as we should say, faithful, but Lionsgate’s insistence on a PG-13 rating in their ambition for Borderlands to effectively please no one curbed that real quick. What a way to make a film already so hopelessly lost in the wilderness of its undeveloped world completely lack personality, or even remnants of what your filmmaker does best.

NOTE: Take a listen to my interview with Eli Roth, where he spoke briefly about Borderlands and gave insights into his previous movie, Thanksgiving:

Starring: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Edgar Ramírez, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu, Gina Gershon, and Jamie Lee Curtis. Voiced by: Jack Black. Directed by: Eli Roth.