Level Down

Borderlands is a strange game to make a film adaptation of. Being a "looter-shooter" it is light on narrative and character with the joy of the game coming from unleashing ludicrous weapons upon hordes of enemies. In order to succeed the movie really needed to nail the wacky tone and look of the game's world while adding in sufficient story and character to make the audience care about what is going on. You could generously say director Eli Roth succeeds at half of one of these goals.

It may be harsh to pin the films shortcomings on Roth as it is unclear how much of this is the movie he signed up to make. Announced in 2015 and in active development since 2020 the script underwent multiple re writes and had Tim Miller come in for weeks of reshoots after Roth departed the project. The horror veteran certainly seems an odd fit for what ended up being a PG13 action comedy. There is defiantly a much better Borderlands movie that could have been made if he'd been allowed to unleash his full on blood and guts style. As it is, even Roths previous family move The House With a Clock in Its Walls had considerably more edge than this.

And boy could this movie have used a little edge. Things look great, the unique visual style of the games is represented about as well as live action can manage but everything else is just half baked. The action is derivative and feels small, the hit and miss juvenile humour of the games is less funny here and even the actors feel like they are at half throttle. Kate Blanchett is great to begin with as a cynical and over it bounty hunter but as her storyline becomes more and more cheese and forced emotion it becomes clear she is miss cast. Kevin Hart seems stuck between doing his usual comedy schtick and playing a leading action man. Jack Black's robot Claptrap is (for better or worse) one of the game's most memorable characters but this less self important version feels like a cheap Jack Black impression. Ariana Greenblatt comes off best, giving sass and kicking ass as deranged teen Tiny Tina but she is hampered by having to be as much plot mcguffin as character.

Said plot is nothing to write home about as a soldier, a bounty hunter, a psycho (big muscly guy who talks funny) and a motormouth robot on one wheel travel across a lawless planet with a kid to find a hidden vault that the kid is the key to opening while the evil corporation they stole the kid from pursues them. It's a perfectly serviceable means of getting the characters from A to B to C which would be fine for a film of this type if the character back and forth was enough to liven things up, sadly that's where Borderlands is really lacking. This cast should have been a hoot to hang out with but the dialogue is beyond lazy with awkward exposition and stilted banter. The characters want to be out there but with no straight man to play off none of them deliver.

Borderlands is a fairly sizeable miss, which is a shame because it's clear that the project had ambition but it needed more. More spirit, more individuality and more time and effort put into the script.

5 decent bits of loot from 10 crates.

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