Borderlands - Movie Review

As the daughter of the powerful corporate magnate Atlas is kidnapped by a general from his own private army, he hires a bounty hunter to bring her back. The bounty hunter Lilith tracks the daughter to the dangerous planet Pandora where an ancient treasure is supposed to be hidden. When Lilith begins to learn the truth about Atlas and his daughter, the rescue attempt turns into a treasure hunt and a race to find it before Atlas does.

First off, I have never played any Borderlands games and I do not know how the movie compares to the games. This review is therefore entirely based on the movie as a movie.

The plot of the Borderlands movie is very generic, which in itself is not a bad thing, but it is also rushed and badly executed. We have the reluctant hero, hired by the villain to bring back something special, only to learn that the villain is the villain and have to fulfil a prophecy the prevent the villain in succeeding. We have seen this plot before and it can be a decent plot, but when it is rushed it loses its excitement. It does not manage to create any emotional depth or urgency in the story. We get one action scene after another where the problem is solved without any difficulty for the heroes. Even the villain is boring; Atlas is nothing more than a rich and white CEO with no power, no villain charisma and no presence.

It is supposed to be an action comedy, but the crude and crass humour fell short with every joke. It felt like the movie was created for nine year old kids, which is sad when the games are filled with gore, violence sexual themes and foul language. The dirties part of the movie are Claptrap's joke. There is no blood, no gore and except for Moxxi, there is hardly any sexual theme. And if you think that it at least will have some great action packed songs because it is an action movie, then you are wrong. There are hardly any songs in it and the best song in the movie is Ace of Spades by Motörhead, but it does not match the beat of the scene and it makes you wonder why they chose it.

It is kind of sad of boring Borderlands is considering how great the cast is. The movie is packed with great actors like Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Hart, Kate Blanchet, Jack Black and the wonderful Arianna Greenblatt who is, in my opinion, one of the best actors in her generation. Unfortunately, they have not been utilised properly and the script does not allow them show the range they are capable of. When all that is said, I have decided to give it two out of five stars. It is not a horrible movie with nothing good in it, it is just very basic and generic and it targets the wrong audience.