Borderlands Review: A Boring Slog Through The Wasteland

If you've seen the trailer for "Borderlands," you've seen all six of the main characters at their wisecracking best. Aside from Claptrap (Jack Black), the two-and-half-minutes of a trailer is about all the time the movie has for any of that. Instead, we're treated to a string of explosions and shoot-outs — and very little else. And while those can be fun, without anything to ground them, they amount to very little. As a result, "Borderlands" isn't an epic disaster, but without anything to hang it's story on, it is boring.

The plot, such as it is, goes something like this: Lilith (Cate Blanchett) is a bounty hunter on a job when Atlas (Edgar Ramirez), the head of a multi-planet corporation, recruits her to find his daughter. She does this fairly efficiently, but quickly learns that Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) doesn't want to go back to Atlas. In fact, she doesn't seem to like him much. And soon, a whole mess of people in official Atlas gear are coming after Lilith and Tina. So Lilith does what anyone in her situation would do: she goes with Tina and her friends, Roland (Kevin Hart) and Krieg (Florian Munteanu), while Claptrap, the robot who made himself known to Lilith earlier, chases after them as they flee from the army that was sent to find them.

They end up on a mission to get all three keys to a vault with the help of an additional team member, Dr. Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis). No one's exactly sure what's in there, but everyone wants to get in so it must be something good, right? That keeps the plot moving along, but not exactly humming. Most action movies like this one have a plot that revolves around getting something that's really just a MacGuffin, but here, the whole thing feels especially pointless. There are several reasons for that.

One major problem is straight out of filmmaking 101. Outside of the fight sequences, instead of showing the audience what happens, the movie keeps telling us. In limited quantities, that's not a crime, despite what film professors may say — but the fact that nothing is dramatized is a shame. We're told that the Eridians were aliens who died out and left really cool stuff. We're told that Tiny Tina is a clone. We're told that Lilith's mother left her with Dr. Tannis. These things don't have the same visceral appeal if they aren't shown to us, and as a result, the movie misses out on some major opportunities.

It's clear that instead of fleshing out those scenes, the director Eli Roth, who also co-wrote the script with Joe Crombie, wanted to spend the film budget on the fight sequences. But he could have shaved those scenes down a little to make room. Scenes explaining the characters' backstories would have made a difference. In fact, just about anything would have made a difference in this long chain of shooting and blowing things up. As it stands, though, the movie feels like a string of sequences in a video game, but since you're not playing, it feels tedious instead of inspired, dull instead of gripping.

Another problem is that the characters aren't more than ciphers. While many fans of the "Borderlands" video games have (loudly) criticized the movie's casting, this is actually addressed. There are scenes at the beginning of the film that note that Cate Blanchett is significantly older than her character in the games, which makes Dr. Tannis significantly older too because the pair knew each other since Lilith was young. Roland being short is remarked on too. What's not clear is why any of these changes were made.

That's a puzzle in itself, but the real problem is that the characters aren't given any time to shine. Why cast Blanchett or Kevin Hart if you aren't going to let them do anything? Hart, in particular, is given short shrift; we know practically nothing about his Roland except that he used to be a soldier. But no one is given much of a chance. Lionsgate has provided colorful explanations for all of the characters, but I didn't see much evidence for them. Instead they just seem like cogs in a machine.

Mostly, though, the movie seems to suffer from its rating. Eli Roth is mostly known as a director of horror movies, and most of those have R ratings. Not only does this allow the movies to pump up the gore factor, but it also allows them to curse, and the latter is what "Borderlands" needed. After all, if they could have had some "Deadpool"-style cursing, the movie at least could have been amusing. Instead, with a PG-13 rating, most of the characters barely develop a personality. That said, I do wonder if Roth would have been capable of giving this movie the grounding it needed. After all, horror movies tend to be light on character too. And in a horror movie, perhaps, you don't necessarily need strong characters as long as your villain is killer, both figuratively and literally. But in this movie, you need slightly more. However, "Borderlands"' characters aren't even archetypes. There are some great actors in this cast and they all seem game, but Roth never takes advantage of it.

While Roth and his production designer, Andrew Menzies, do many of the sets justice, particularly when the ragtag group goes to the city center, the story just can't live up to this. "Borderlands" is a poor man's version of "Guardians of the Galaxy"; while it may look kind of pretty, it has none of the personality of that earlier movie. Don't waste your time on this one.

"Borderlands" opens in theaters on August 9.