“Shoot him in the face! Shoot him in the face AGAIN!!” Claptrap (Jack Black)
I open with one of the better lines from the sci-fi, game-based misadventure, Borderlands. Even with two Oscar winners, Cate Blanchett as Lilith and Jami Lee Curtis as strange scientist Tannis, this summer filler helps define “hot mess.” It lacks even a minimum of soul, or heart for that matter, as it chases the charisma of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and DC’s Suicide Squad.
Lilith, brandishing a sidearm suitable for Clint Eastwood, is a bounty hunter in between jobs, hired by J D Vance lookalike Edgar Ramirez as Atlas to find his abducted daughter Tina (Ariana Greenblatt, who should have been guided by writer-director Eli Roth to tone down the swaggering snark) from the junk-heap planet, Pandora (nothing like the world in Avatar), where little Lilith was abandoned by her mother.
The script’s weaknesses emerge when, for instance, highly-paid Lilith easily finds Tina, who turns out to have a handful of explosive rabbit-like teddy bears. Roth, lightyears away from his rousing Thanksgiving, could barely handle the interesting psychological handicaps even as metaphor. Like the junky planet, nothing is whole much less amusing (see banner quote above).
Despite her acting chops and admirable cheekbones, Blanchett is nothing like her Oscaar-winning Tar, where she could be a bad-girl conductor and lesbian and elicit our abiding sympathy. In Borderlands, she is a video-game heroine, stiff and cold, like the movie itself.
Despite Jack Black’s attempt to resurrect a Star Wars droid and Roth’s misfiring imitation of the famous bar scene in that classic, Borderlands is no classic. See Deadpool & Wolverine, Mad Max, or Fast and Furious for a deserving sci-fi wannabe with leads who emulate screwball comedy that gives us heart and soul and real laughs.
“Some wacko BS,” Lilith about the plot of Borderlands.
Borderlands
Director: Eli Roth (Thanksgiving)
Screenplay: Roth
Cast: Cate Blanchett (Carol), Kevin Hart (Central Intelligence)
Screenplay: Roth, Joe Crombie
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1h 42m
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take (recently listed by Feedspot as two of the ten best NPR Movie Podcasts) out of WCBE 90.5 FM, Columbus, Ohio. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com