Borderlands and all the images you see in this review are owned by Lionsgate Films
Directed by Eli Roth
Video game adaptations have certainly gotten better in the last few years, but there’s still a wide gulf between genuinely good movies and good-for-a-video-game-adaptation. I had mixed feelings about this when the trailer dropped as it looked like a Guardians of the Galaxy knock-off which worked out well for Dungeons & Dragons, but it’s also directed by the guy whose made some of my least favorite movies of all time. Does Eli Roth finally prove himself to be a competent mainstream director with a fun adaptation of a beloved game franchise, or will he be just another director who couldn’t crack the code on turning games into movies? Let’s find out!!
Welcome to Pandora! The planet that is to late-stage Capitalism what Rapture was to Objectivism! Corporations have stripped the planet bare, everyone is a jerk only out for themselves, and the masses are placated with a false promise of ascending up the social ladder by achieving the Pandorian Dream; in this case, finding a secret vault full of ancient alien treasure. Bounty hunter Lilith (Cate Blanchet) is far too savvy to buy into that nonsense, but she makes her way to the planet anyway in order to rescue Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), the daughter of an industrialist (Edgar Ramirez) who was taken to Pandora by Roland (Kevin Hart). When she arrives, she finds the foul-mouthed teen bumming around with Roland and Krieg; the latter being a jacked dude with a mask (Florian Munteanu) who’s surprisingly good with kids. Let’s just say that the rescue goes a bit sideways for Lilith, a situation not helped by a bunch of space cops trying to grab her bounty out from under her, and she ends up stuck with this group of misfits who are there to find the vault and prevent Tina’s dad from using it for evil! With the help of a local scientist (Jamie Lee Curtis) who knows more about the vault than anyone else on the planet as well as a robot named Claptrap (Jack Black) who follows Lilith around and seems to be programmed for maximum annoyance, will they be able to find the one thing on the planet that the wealthy can’t get their hands on and use it to make things better for the people of Pandora? Why did Roland need to take Tina in order to do this, and is does Lilith have a connection to all this that she has yet to understand? Perhaps they can also solve the mystery of how her hair is able to look like that without using super glue and spray paint.
The Reviewers Unite 