Borderlands Review: Cate's Video Game Fan-fair Does Not Land At All

★★★★★

Eli Roth's sci-fi action comedy drama based on the video game tries to make it a fan-fair rather than a fun-fair and fails in both. The video game series has a separate fan base due to its originality and action-adventure stuff, but the team couldn't understand that gaming is a different thing and filmmaking is a different game altogether. This sadistic mix of action, adventure, absurd humor, comedy, and science fiction goes terribly wrong in every department—you just name any.

Borderlands plot follows Lillith (Cate Blanchett), an infamous outlaw with a mysterious past who is hired by the most powerful man in the universe to find his missing daughter. She has to return to the planet of Pandora, the place where she grew up and is aware of every danger. Lillith forms an alliance with a team of misfits: Roland (Kevin Hart), a former elite mercenary, now desperate for redemption; Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), a feral teenage demolitionist; Krieg (Florian Munteanu), Tina's musclebound, rhetorically challenged protector; Dr. Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), the scientist with a tenuous grip on sanity; and Claptrap (voiced by Jack Black), a persistently wise-asss robot. Together, they must battle alien monsters and dangerous bandits to find and protect the missing girl, a special one who may hold the key to an unimaginable power that can destroy every universe.

The screenplay by Eli Roth and Joe Crombie isn't what you call a mess; it's a simple, basic story with an engaging plot, mainly written to entertain kids. It's just that the storyline and screenplay don't make any sense if you are trying for logic and quality cinema. All the characters in the film behave like they want us to say, "Wait, was that a joke?" I mean, almost every single character had those moments, and it just starts frustrating you soon after the main plot begins. The jokes make you scratch your head instead of making you laugh. Like I said, the humor is too absurd and childish to carry on with it.

Even for the performances, I would say this film has nothing to offer. That redhead look may add glam appeal to already beautiful Blanchett, but I have seen her beauty in many movies already where she has performed well. Here, the role didn't require any such efforts. I even liked those colorful fire wings, and she shines in that part. Wait, was that enough? No. Kevin Hart goes flat in his role, and Ariana Greenblatt hardly makes anything to please you. She is more disturbing with that radically funny humor attached to her character, and those expressions were too dull. Jack Black gets the most of the verbal jokes as a robot, but they aren't really what I can call "good jokes." Edgar Ramírez gets a couple of good scenes in the end, but that's all about him. Florian Munteanu and Jamie Lee Curtis' roles had potential but were wasted, while the rest of the supporting cast isn't noticeable at all.

Rogier Stoffers has shot the film accordingly, and the VFX team has added good support. It's the production design and visual effects that work as the only saving grace for the film. The 10-minute climax portion alone is more entertaining than the entire film. "No salvation without sacrifice" had to be the best line in this tedious ride, while one more line about memories in the end is something you can remember for a few hours—that's only until you forget the film, or it's possible that you will forget the film quicker than the dialogue. Eli Roth has made an outright disaster that cannot be excused even by fans. Borderlands is one rare piece of crap that you want to enjoy as a video game fan but cannot enjoy because we all have something called "brain" right up there. It's grand, but no good. Bordercrashes!