Call me an optimist, but I went into the book of writer and director Eli Roth Borderland hoping for a good time – and thus ignoring all the warning signs. I’ve seen a number of passable films that have been significantly reshot in post-production and/or have been on the shelf for long periods of time, and not every film that doesn’t get a lot of critical acclaim should be dismissed out of hand. There’s a talented ensemble cast on screen, and while I can’t say I’m a fan of/know the video game, I liked the general vibe of the trailers.
Borderland
Release date: 9 August 2024
Led by: Eli Roth
Written by: Eli Roth and Joe Crombie
With: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Edgar Ramírez, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu, Gina Gershon and Jamie Lee Curtis
Evaluation: PG-13 for intense violence and action scenes, language and some explicit content
Duration: 102 minutes
As it turns out, you can call yourself not only an optimist, but also a foolishly naive one. All of those red flags were flying wildly for a reason: Borderland is a really bad movie. It’s strange to be constantly bombarded with explanations without getting a full sense of the world being built. The only thing that ends up being more underdeveloped than the story is the cast of characters – none of whom can even be described as two-dimensional, because that would be too much of a good thing. Its sensibility is childish, its aesthetic is artificial, and there is not a single section during its 102-minute running time where anything creative or exciting comes about.
Cate Blanchett (the only person in the cast who can reasonably sell the material) plays Lilith – a bounty hunter who is hired by a vague corporate executive named Atlas (Edgar Ramirez) to travel to a notorious planet called Pandora and rescue his daughter Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) after she is kidnapped by a soldier named Roland (Kevin Hart). When Lilith finds her targets, Atlas’ forces move in, but the protagonists all decide to band together for no apparent reason to fight back against them and go on the hunt for a mythical vault that supposedly contains extremely advanced alien technology.
Also picked up along the way are a scarred, masked thug named Krieg (Florian Munteanu), a personalityless scientist named Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), and a goofy robot named Claptrap (Jack Black)… each of whom makes a single contribution to the story and then becomes nothing more than background noise or a name that appears on the poster.
Borderlands really wants to be Guardians Of The Galaxy, but it doesn’t have any of the qualities that make James Gunn’s film so great.
With his band of not-so-heroic heroes and an energy that is directed directly against the nebulous concept of “edgy”, Borderland Cries of effort that Guardians of the Galaxy of video game movies, and it’s pretty astonishing to see how far off the mark it ends up being. Putting aside the complete lack of wit or banter, the film seemingly forgets to give any single character a compelling and/or special motivation; each one just somehow shows up and becomes part of the group as it moves from one plot point to the next. It’s also a gross waste of acting talent, as the stars aren’t given anything remotely exciting to work with, and don’t even add any personal touches to their individual roles (it’s very odd to see Kevin Hart play a run-of-the-mill soldier who doesn’t even get a chance to elicit a laugh).
If a potential blockbuster doesn’t try to make you care about the characters’ goals, you’d hope that it would at least be fun to spend a few hours with the personalities – but that’s just another field in which Borderland fails. There are overwhelmingly cliched badass scenes that are reminiscent of bad action movies from the 2000s and heavily mirror bad action movies from the 1980s, and even simple gross-out gags like the protagonists being covered in piss and garbage feel trite and contrived.
What annoys me most is that the portrayal of Jack Black evokes extreme feelings of annoyance in viewers. As someone who has been a fan of Black his entire career, it pains me to say this, but Claptrap reaches unbearable levels of obnoxiousness – which is admittedly the point of the character, but it’s far too effective.
One wishes that at least a quarter of the energy spent on world-building in Borderlands was redirected into telling a competent story.
Not being someone who knows Borderland Video game, I can’t say specifically how faithful it is to the source material – but I can say that I feel like it tries to cram in as many references and callbacks as possible, much to the detriment of the overall film. Between lame voiceover narration, exposition-heavy dialogue, and mini-plotlines, the film tries desperately to suggest that the audience is being introduced to an expansive galaxy, but most of the material is either confusing to newcomers or hollow in the context of the story being told. Meanwhile, I have no idea why Krieg is wearing a mask/being referred to as a “psycho,” and when the plot finally gets going 40 minutes in, it turns out that the characters are already in possession of two of the three keys they need to get into the aforementioned mythical treasure vault. It’s a mess.
At a time when video game adaptations are finally working properly – the television series The Last of Us And Stand out are prime examples of recent years – Borderland feels like a massive step in the wrong direction. It’s not immediately apparent on screen what exactly went wrong with the film’s development, but you shouldn’t make the same mistake I did and ignore all the warning signs.
