Borderlands (2024)

Borderlands is a film that seems to be destined to make peoples worst top 10 and even a few top spots. I wasn't planning on seeing this at the cinema and instead waiting for it to arrive on streaming but because of the negative reviews it was getting I thought I would go and see if it was as bad as people were making out to be. For the record, I am not an expert on video games. I played the third one many years ago but I couldn't tell you anything about it in terms of how faithful it is to the games. 

This was the first film that I have ever seen that was directed by Eli Roth. He isn't a director known for making tasteful movies. I have no intention of seeing the Hostel films or Green Inferno so I am interested in seeing the one Eli Roth film that I would want to sit through. There was one red flag before I saw the film, the screenplay is written by Roth and Joe Crombie which is a pseudonym after original writer Craig Mazin asked for his name to be taken off the screenplay because of the changes that Roth had made who in interviews said he doesn't care if the characters in the film don't match the characters in the game.

Problems with the film don't just arise with the screenplay. The film was shot in 2022 with reshoots taking place in the summer of that year. Further reshoots were done in 2023 with Tim Miller taking charge. So to say that this film had a trouble production would be an understatement so the fact the film isn't a dumpster fire of a film is quite an achievement.

THE GOOD

Jack Black is funny in this. There is a fine line between love and hate when it comes to Jack Black and the humour that came from Jack Black worked quite well in the context of this film. I also thought that Ariana Greenblatt was fun as Tiny Tina. This character could easily have been annoying but I think it was played just right and she came across well. I thought that Kevin Hart was ok as well but his character didn't seem to have too much to do and I kept forgetting he was in the film when he was off screen. 

Visually it looked similar to the Borderland games. Like I said previously, my experience of Borderlands is minimal at best but from what I do remember about the visuals ring a bell and I quite liked the way this world looked. It could have gone down the route of mimicking Mad Max but they didn't do that and that showed restraint from a director that isn't known for restraint.

THE BAD

Jamie Lee Curtis looked like she didn't know what she was saying. She never seemed like she knew what was going on and so wasn't the big name lead that she was probably hired to be. Cate Blanchett is passable as Lillith but she seems somewhat miscast and I think that whilst she had moments like when she bonded with Tiny TIna, I couldn't help feel like this would have been done better by someone else. Also Edgar Ramirez is someone who I don't know why he keeps getting cast because I never find him believable and as the guy who put Lillith on her path it seems like he was lacking any menace or have something that would make me care about him getting his comeuppance. When he get dragged into the pit at the end of the film, I found myself not really caring because neither he or the film had done anything to make me feel something 

This one is a minor bad point but its that this film also owes a debt to Guardians of the Galaxy where it had a really good soundtrack but made me appreciate how natural in felt in those films whereas in this film it feels like Eli Roth just did it because it seemed fun to do.

OVERALL

So its easy to say that this film isn't terrible. The casting lets the film down but the visuals work quite well and I seem to like it a lot more than most people did. There is very little plot in the film but whereas the characters could do a lot to make the flaws in the narrative, it fails because with the exception of Hart, Black and Greenblatt, the casting was way off for what it should have been. Not sure this film would have been improved with a different director but any plans for a future film would appear to be non-existent.