Borderlands (2024) is directed by Eli Roth and stars Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Ariana Greenblatt, Jack Black, Jamie Lee Curtis, Florian Munteanu, Edgar Ramirez, Janina Gavankar, Benjamin Byron Davis, Gina Gershon, Olivier Richters, and Bobby Lee. The film is based on the video game series of the same name and follows Lilith (Blanchett), an infamous bounty who’s hired by Atlas (Ramirez), the universe’s most powerful man, to rescue his daughter Tina (Greenblatt) from supposed kidnappers led by a rouge mercenary named Roland (Hart). Unfortunately for Lilith, the search for Tina takes her back to her home planet of Pandora, a perilous world of bandits, treasure hunters, and mega-corporations all searching for a priceless treasure hidden there. When Lilith discovers that Atlas only wants to use Tina as a tool to find the treasure, she decides to flip sides and join forces with Roland’s ragtag group. Joining them is Krieg, a local savage; Calptrap, a humorous robot; and Tannis, an old ally of Lilith’s mom. Together the group sets out to unlock Pandora before it falls into the wrong hands.  

Although the cast features some strong performers, each character is somewhat weak for various reasons. Blanchett gives the strongest (live-action) performance of the bunch and truly seems to understand the specific tone the movie is going for. I enjoyed her quite a bit as an action protagonist, I just wish she could be in a better movie than this. 

Kevin Hart is serviceable enough, but there’s no denying that his casting as Roland feels like a questionable choice. Besides maybe Jack Black, Hart is the most proven comedic actor in the cast but plays the only serious/normal character. I have no problem with Hart playing a serious role, it’s just odd that he does it in what’s mostly a comedic film. 

As for Adriana Greenblatt’s Tina, this has to be one of the most annoying main characters I’ve seen this year. The character is basically the worst version of the “moody teenager” trope but amplified tenfold by the fact that she’s also mentally unhinged and likes to blow stuff up at the worst possible times. On paper, I can see how this might seem fun, but in execution, it just results in a character that’s grating and impossible to connect to. 

As for the supporting cast, Jamie Lee Curtis and Jack Balck are fun in their respective roles, it’s just a shame that the movie doesn’t take the time to develop them beyond their hurried introductions and goofy one-liners. On top of this is a forgettably generic villain played by Edgar Ramirez who suffers from the same lack of characterization. No matter the characters, there’s a real lack of interesting dynamics/relationships. This is because the movie seems more interested in getting to the next action sequence than developing its characters. This causes nearly every emotional moment to fall completely flat because it’s impossible to care about anyone.

The film implements a unique visual style that effectively emulates the source material but is unfortunately brought down by some often horrendous CGI. The action itself has a fun little bit of Mad Max (1979) flavor and ends up being one of the it’s best aspects. It’s nothing special, but when the characters are this weak, any deviation feels like a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, the entire tone is steeped in a kind of “why are you bothering me?” attitude that immediately comes across as immature. I’m not sure what they were trying to achieve with this, but why should a viewer care about a movie that seems neutral about its existence? To be fair, the studio probably wasn’t too excited about the movie either. 

Overall, this is yet another entry in the crappy video games movie adaptations canon. The characters stink, the visuals are inconsistent, and there’s an insufferable voiceover that delivers almost every important piece of exposition. Things just conveniently/randomly happen to push the story along and it hopes you’re too dumb to notice. It’s just another movie that ignores its target audience, tries to satisfy everyone, and therefore satisfies no one. I actually more or less enjoyed this for the first half an hour. After that, it goes downhill and goes downhill fast. At least it’s only 90 minutes long. D