Borderlands
by Hope Madden
I want very much to love that Cate Blanchett keeps making Eli Roth movies. Maybe I could find that love if Roth would put her in something he knows how to make—a horror film—instead of trapping her inside a genre he can’t seem to figure out himself.
Borderlands is Roth’s big screen adaptation of a popular video game, a Mad Max style fantasy that follows low life bounty hunter Lilith (Blanchett) to a vile planet of opportunists and thieves on a quest to retrieve the kidnapped daughter of a mogul (Edgar Ramírez).
But daughter Tina (Ariana Greenblatt, Barbie) doesn’t want to be rescued and soon, begrudgingly, Lilith becomes part of Tina’s ragtag band of misfit heroes (along with Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, Florian Munteanu and the voice of Jack Black).
That’s a good cast, top to bottom. Black and Blanchett co-led Roth’s 2018 misfire The House with a Clock in its Walls. It wasn’t a big miss. It was a fine if unremarkable adaptation of the John Bellairs novel for kids. But Blanchett and Black were fun.
This go-round, Black’s limited to pointless annoyance as he voices robot sidekick Claptrap. Blanchett is glorious, naturally, cutting an imposing video game figure with sly wit and grace. Greenblatt’s a bit of fun, Hart’s underused. But the cast is not the problem.
Roth feels out of sorts. The action is not compelling, the comic timing is way off, there’s little chemistry among his merry band, the stakes feel low, surprises are few, meaningful transitions from one set up to the next don’t exist, the FX are not great.
There are two main action set pieces (that’s not nearly enough, by the way) that could have amounted to something interesting: one with a car and a giant piss field monster and the second with an underground tunnel full of lunatics. Roth can’t generate either the exhilaration or the comedy the first calls for. The second comes closer—it’s a horror set up, truth be told, and that should be an easier fit for the filmmaker—and it’s a natural video game fit. It’s the closest he comes to excitement, but it’s belabored, its end an utter disappointment.
Like the film.
