Going in, I had my doubts about Borderlands, the latest overblown video game adaptation created to entice PG-13 moviegoers.
First off, it has a near decade-long history of failed attempts to crack its code, including Craig Mazin, who now shares a co-writing credit using “Joe Crombie” (who has only this one listed credit on IMDb and, according to IMDb, is Mazin’s pseudonym).
If this is the case, after wild small-screen success with Chernobyl and The Last of Us, you could understand why he wouldn’t want to be associated with the final product. Then its original director and credited co-writer and story creator Eli Roth shot the film during the pandemic in 2021. But when two weeks of reshoots were required, he had to turn it over to someone else due to his commitment to completing last year’s hoot of a holiday horror movie Thanksgiving. Thus, Tim Miller (2016’s Deadpool) took the reins and receives an executive producer credit.
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Finally, Lionsgate is dumping it in an August cinematic wasteland reminiscent of the actual wasteland that makes up Pandora, the shithole of a planet where most of the film is set.
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So, thank god for Cate Blanchett, who shot this before her acclaimed 2022 drama Tàr. Like just about everything she touches, she somehow makes the lead character of bounty hunter Lilith not only watchable, but even credible. In the frenetic world of Borderlands, that is a tall order. After narrating the setup for the film, when we actually meet her, she is at a bar on Prometha, and quickly demonstrates her kickass abilities, something noticed by the slick CEO Atlas (Edgar Ramirez), who hires her to bring back his missing daughter, Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) from Pandora, which, as it turns out, coincidentally happens to be an old hometown for Lilith, who still holds psychological scars from it. Nevertheless the promise of easy cash results in her taking on the mission. The past inhabitants of Pandora, however, have completely trashed the place. It is a toxic dump and now looks like something out of Furiosa, only worse. Nevertheless, in no time, she finds Tiny Tina, who is shooting off explosive stuffed bunnies like napalm and clearly is a handful.
The bottom line there is that left behind on Pandora is the so-called Vault, which could hold the key for the survival of the planet and the universe, and Tina just might be key herself in its discovery, something her father, the titular villain here, knows all too well.
It was left behind by the now-extinct Eridians, but it, the myth (?) says, holds vast technological value in the right — and wrong — hands. In pure Guardians of the Galaxy fashion, a ragtag team slowly turns up one by one with their own motives. There is Roland (Kevin Hart), who has kidnapped Tina; Krieg (Florian Munteanu); Dr. Patricia Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), with past secrets of her own; and Claptrap, a Wall-E wannabe robot voiced wittily by Jack Black, who gets all the best lines in the entire movie.
Along the way, Lilith also encounters the helpful nightclub diva Mad Moxxi (a spirited Gina Gershon), thrown into this stew. They must sideline an Imax screen full of colorful baddies, many associates of Atlas on their tail, not to mention Atlas himself, who wants to create super weapons, as it is game-on to find the Vault.
The movie Roth has mainly birthed looks awfully good, very colorful, very expensive, and full of guns and explosions galore. It rarely slows down to breathe, or for that matter to make much sense. I haven’t ever played the video game, which has been around for over a decade. But I have to believe it is probably more engaging than the movie Roth steers here, despite a game cast trying to make it work well enough to spawn a franchise. I wouldn’t count on that happening.
Title: Borderlands
Distributor: Lionsgate
Release date: August 9, 2024
Director: Eli Roth
Screenwriters: Eli Roth, Joe Crombie
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Hart, Gina Gershon, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu, Jack Black, Haley Bennett, Edgar Ramirez
Rating: PG-13
Running time: 1 hr 42 min