After The Last Of Us and Fallout, you’d be forgiven for thinking that we are finally enjoying an era of quality video-game adaptations, and that Borderlands, based on the wacky 2009 sci-fi shooter RPG, is riding the same wave. Hell, it’s even got Cate Blanchett (an actor who’s earned those italics twice over) in the lead role, having a bullet-spraying hoot as a grizzled yet elegant bounty hunter. And with its colourful assortment of irreverent characters, corralled by a writer/director best known previously for horror (namely, Eli Roth), you might also expect, or at least hope, it respectfully and effectively echoes James Gunn’s crossover success with his Guardians Of The Galaxy films.
Sadly, that ain’t the case. Borderlands so wants to be Guardians Of The Galaxy. It has retro needle drops aplenty (including a battle that kicks off to Motörhead’s ‘Ace Of Spades’) and ladles on as much out-there violence as its 12A rating allows (there’s even that bit where they kill a giant, tentacled monster from the inside-out), but it doesn’t come close to capturing the same Guardians space-magic.
Visually, it falls somewhere between Mad Max: Fury Road and Spacehunter: Adventures In The Forbidden Zone
Roth and co-writer Joe Crombie have neither Gunn’s wit nor his wisdom. The wisecracks are stale (“I’m programmed for humour, so I will process that as witty banter,” chirps the irksomely sassy robot voiced by Jack Black), the reaches for emotional resonance feel stretched (Blanchett’s Lilith has mommy issues, y’know), and the group dynamic is off balance. Muscle-lunk Krieg (Florian Munteanu) is less a character than a buff bundle of Poundshop one-liners (“IT’S TIME TO BLEED!”), Kevin Hart’s “elite soldier” Roland barely registers (who is he? Why is he here?), and bomb-tossing teen Tiny Tina’s (Ariana Greenblatt) character arc goes no deeper than her sub-meta realisation that she’s not the main character.
It's sloppily assembled, too, smacking of nervy, too-many-cooks post-production. Scenes are routinely cut short (sometimes mid-punchline), with a few others apparently beginning mid-beat, giving the film a grindhouse feel in all the wrong ways. Visually, it falls somewhere between Mad Max: Fury Road and Spacehunter: Adventures In The Forbidden Zone (thudding closer to the latter), with dangerous planet Pandora — yes, another one — rendered in dusty canyons and, with a nod to the film’s video-game roots, subterranean crate-filled rooms. It is literally boxy.
Throughout, Blanchett does her best with what little she’s given, but as great as it is to see her taking the ‘Chris’ role in a big, silly actioner, she was far more enjoyable doing this kind of thing in Thor: Ragnarok. It’s not like Borderlands is so bad it’ll do her any damage. It’s just a shame that her debut as an action-movie lead turned out to be so clunky and, we suspect, forgettable.
