This action-comedy from Newton director Eli Roth is a lifeless, derivative dud that wastes top-tier talent.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
I’ll bet you Cate Blanchett has never seen a 6% rating on the Tomatometer before. Why on Earth did Blanchett, the genius of “Tar” (2022), “Elizabeth” (1998), and many more, agree to be in a film directed and co-written by Newton-born Eli Roth? In the wake of the war in Iraq, Roth (“Hostel”) and directors such as James Wan (“Saw,” “Aquaman”) created and professionally benefited from the suddenly popular genre known as “torture porn” and have since become schlockmeisters.
Described as an action-comedy and, like the far superior streamer smash hit “The Last of Us,” based on a video game, “Borderlands” has none of the heart of “The Last of Us,” very few laughs, terrible CGI, and action that is either completely familiar or body-count-movie in style.
In exposition, we learn that a race known as the Eridians once thrived upon a planet named Pandora (Isn’t this name taken?), where a vault, if not a box, is hidden that contains the secret to limitless power (Are you yawning yet?). Corporations such as Atlas, run by the supervillain also named Atlas (Edgar Ramirez, not quite twirling his mustache), are desperate to get their hands on the vault.
On another planet, a bounty hunter named Lilith (Blanchett, also narrating), who left Pandora when she was a child, is hired by Atlas in a scene set in a cantina to find his daughter Tina (scene-stealer Ariana Greenblatt, “Ahsoka”). Meanwhile, the delightfully bratty Tina, who sports cloth rabbit ears, has already been “rescued” by super-fighter Roland of the Crimson Lance (Kevin Hart, if you can believe it) and is on Pandora, living in a pile of junk and surrounded by deadly “Psychos.” Tina’s boon companion is a non-speaking Psycho giant named Krieg (Florian Monteanu), who is her bodyguard. Tina likes tossing bomb-stuffed toy bunnies at those who displease her. Are you ready for a wise-cracking, motor-mouthed droid named Claptrap voiced by Jack Black? Opening fight scenes set the pattern for the rest of the film: a lot of shooting, a pile of corpses, and very bad heavy metal music courtesy, I assume, of composer Steve Jablonsky of “Transformers” infamy. What is not lifted from the aforementioned “Transformers” is borrowed from, of course, “Star Wars,” the “Mad Max” franchise, the “Guardians of the Galaxy” films, and any number of funnier, more clever space operas.
As Lilith, Blanchett sports a ‘do the color of those vests worn by crossing guards, a bad attitude, and a smart-alecky confidence in her super-shooting skills. But not even this brilliant actor can do much with the bantering dialogue attributed to Roth and Joe Crombie, whose previous credit is adapting a script for “Love, Death and Robots.” I’m not sure what experience Roth and Crombie have in comedy, if any. In lieu of laugh lines, Lilith twirls her guns to distract us and herself. When Lilith complains that she is “getting too old for all this,” you, unfortunately tend to agree.
On Pandora, where Lilith, Roland, Tina, Krieg, and an archaeologist named Tannis (Academy Award-winner Jamie Lee Curtis) team up to find the vault, “Borderlands” remains a repetitive series of shootouts and chases with Claptrap palavering away in the background. In one scene, Roland drives a truck into a place called, I think, Piss Canyon (What, no Licorice Lagoon?), and he and his cohorts face a giant phallic monster. Tannis leads them on a quest to find three keys. In a place called Sanctuary City, the team dons digital masks and eludes Storm Trooper-like adversaries. You just sit there, waiting for someone to say, “These aren’t the Droids you’re looking for.” Eventually, our friends get away by hiding inside garbage bins (another lift) and make their way to (get this) the Caustic Caverns. Roth has gone from torture porn to almost-as-painful (if not caustic) sci-fi pop for the idiocracy.
‘Borderlands’
Rating: PG-13, violence, disturbing action, profanity and suggestive language.
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Ariana Greenblatt, Jamie Lee Curtis
Director: Eli Roth
Writer: Roth, Joe Crombie
Running Time: 1 hour, 42 minutes
Where to Watch: AMC Boston Common, AMC Causeway, Alamo Drafthouse Seaport, Landmark Kendall Square, and suburban theaters.
Grade: C-
Boston Movie News 