Borderlands film review: Starry cast can’t save video game flop
Horror maestro Eli Roth (Hostel) delves into the world of video game adaptations in this big screen version of Borderlands, the first-person shooter that has spawned many sequels and imitators. With the success of Uncharted, Super Mario Bros, and Five Nights At Freddy’s, the stigma attached to movies based on games isn’t as prominent as it once was. Can a cast of award winners keep that trend going?
The sci-fi actioner stars Cate Blanchett as Lilith, a ruthless bounty hunter who is hired by wealthy mogul Atlas (Edgar Ramirez) to track down his daughter, Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt). Tina has been willingly kidnapped by mercenary Roland (Kevin Hart) and her protector Krieg (Florian Munteanu) and taken to the dangerous planet of Pandora.
Sometimes a film comes along that makes you question how on earth it made it to the cinema. Roth’s film doesn’t seem to function in any aspect, with a cliché story propelled by horrendous dialogue, unlikable characters, and a garish aesthetic (even when you consider the source material). Whatever charm the games had has been lost in this Guardians of The Galaxy pretender, which spent an awful lot of money to look this cheap. It has a surprisingly childish sense of humour, given how violent the action is, and offers no reason to care for these characters, who never get time to develop.
With a colourful look at a badass attitude, Blanchett’s Lilith would have been a delightful Han Solo-like antihero with a bit more care. Not in this film, sadly, with the Oscar winner’s character slowly eroded by terrible lines and a deluge of effects. Fellow great Jamie Lee Curtis is also underutilised as a figure from Lilith’s past, while Hart is unusually serious, which is a crying shame in a film that is desperate for some effective humour. To be very generous, the wisecracking robot Claptrap (voiced by Jack Black) is an inventive subversion of Star Wars droids of the past, but that really is scraping the barrel.
A shoo-in for one of the worst movies of the year, Borderlands malfunctions in every scene, reminding you why video game movies used to be a byword for disaster. Considering the creatives involved, this wreck of a film is unforgivable.
• Borderlands is in cinemas now