Borderlands

This review may contain spoilers!

 

Borderlands is an adaptation of the video game series of the same name. In this film, we follow Lilith, a bounty hunter who is tasked by a weapons mogul to recover his daughter. This young girl is widely sought after, as it is said she holds the key to unlocking the mysterious vault located on the planet Pandora.

There is something very surface level here available for fans of the games. There's a light aesthetic that evokes the world and takes you to settings, characters or weapons you can visually recognise and appreciate.

 

Cate Blanchett, who played Lilith, makes for a fine protagonist for this film; Blanchett's experienced hand turns this old bounty hunter with a chip on her shoulder into something worth watching. Benjamin Byron Davis, who played Marcus, brings something that feels authentic from the games to life; Davis really has fun with this gun merchant and his light background presence was a joy.

However, the best performance came from Jack Black, who voiced Claptrap. This is the sort of performance work where it felt like Black was having fun in the recording booth. He only had to commit to the role on the page in front of him and not the rest of this wider production. For this reason and because of Black's own frequent bursts of exuberance, alongside his history of voice acting, we get one of the better roles in the film. Claptrap is the strongest source of humour, often with a very dry type of wit and a bemoaning approach to line delivery. Black really gets the wild range of emotional outcry Claptrap has and really toys with that throughout. Claptrap might not be the biggest pull for this film, but Jack Black makes this one of the most source accurate and fun roles in the line-up.

I struggle to see any good intention behind the making of this film, it is the most soulless blockbuster I have seen in a long time. It has no sense of audience, I don't really understand who the creators expected to be watching this. The film is often led by heavy helpings of exposition, first through narration, then delivered by performers within a multitude of scenes and then finally in a late-stage third act flashback sequence. The film references the characters and their histories with one another almost as soon as the film kicks off; this made me wonder if the hope was to appeal more to the video game fan base. Yet the characters and the world are written extremely different to what one has experienced in the video game world so that audience isn't being reached either. The whole film is a loose romp around the planet finding secret keys and then open the secret vault type of story, so it is very bare and plain storytelling. Our protagonists are a terrible mix of personalities, with barely a charismatic player in the bunch. There also seems to be a real "I'm getting too old for this shit" slant on the film, with a number of protagonists being aged up for no real added value to the plot. Lilith as a protagonist is played well by Blanchett, but her arc towards hero isn't very earned and just seems to happen because the film pushes it to happen. The antagonist for the film is so boring; Atlas postulates and gives long explanations, but he doesn't feel like a heavy presence within the film. There are no points within the film where it feels like the story is moving with purpose, even all the way up to the final scene.

The visual style of the film is really poor, the filming often pushes too close or sits in a way that you feel like you're in a sound stage and not within the world of the film. I thought the visual effects were frightfully bad, be that CGI tentacles, Siren powers or the imposition of Atlas' head over another performer. The score for this movie was boring and evoked no strong emotion, even in an action scene. The soundtrack was the real surprise, something that the Borderlands series has always excelled at falls flat here. They even used a song by The Heavy, but in a way that felt like it had no reverence or understanding on how to place music.

Kevin Hart, who played Roland, really doesn't have the leading man presence required of this heroic soldier role; more than that, Hart just doesn't have the physicality to portray a soldier. Edgar Ramírez, who played Atlas, gives some incredibly flat line delivery; he doesn't even really grandstand or ham it up as the villain, resulting in something quite dull. Jamie Lee Curtis, who played Tannis, really feels off the mark as this quirky scientist; Curtis really takes to playing a neurodiverse role like a blunt tool and seems to barely have an understanding of what she's portraying. Ariana Greenblatt, who played Tiny Tina, is a fine up-and-coming actress who clearly would have done well with better direction; Greenblatt just plays at crazy here, which results in a very over the top performance. Florian Munteanu, who played Krieg, just feels too restrained in what should be the wildest role of the film; Munteanu is just here to be a physical role and struggles to find a character. Janina Gavankar, who played Knoxx, is just here to play at the stereotypical henchman; Gavankar's third act change of heart is really corny and entirely out of left field. Gina Gershon, who played Moxxi, just doesn't feel like the glamorous and sexy bar proprietor she is portraying; Gershon falls victim to a role that comes off as dull due to the line work being clogged with exposition. Haley Bennett, who played Lilith's Mum, is a third act role that is meant to surprise but actually lends nothing to the film; Bennett fails to lend an emotional beat to Lilith's backstory through her role.

We're right back to making lifeless husks for video game to film adaptations. I would give Borderlands a 0.5/10.