Borderlands (Prime Video) 2024


Famed director Eli Roth. An all star lead cast of Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Black, and Chris Rock. Coupled with Great looking visual effects, a trailer that promised energy filled, off kilter cinematography and story, and yet…..I left feeling underwhelmed. It is not a horrible movie, just extremely underwhelming. 

 I have not played the games and as such cannot comment on its accuracy to the source material. Visually the movie looks great; I like what I see. The vibrant colors and offbeat appearance to everything complements the visual effects nicely. I love the cast, with Blanchett and Curtis being my favorites. The issue here is the narrative itself which up front feels like at least 3 separate stories that someone tried to salvage into something coherent. 

On one hand you have a cliched “badass loner gets saddled with protecting annoying person and they end up helping each other” plot involving Blanchett’s Lilith character and Tiny Tina. On another hand you have a “different factions trying to find a treasure” Indiana jones type plot going on. And then you have a Guardians of the Galaxy styled “bunch of misfits who grow close over their adventure” story with the addition of Kevin Hart’s Roland and a muscular masked man named Krieg.  

The movie feels like a highlights reel of random video game levels with little relation to each other. Evading the authorities in a wacky city. Evading giant worms and piss in a toxic wasteland, going through an underground sewer swarming with crazy enemies. The erratic plot comes to its peak when, with 15 minutes left to go, the characters literally teleport everyone to the site of the treasure that everyone was searching for so we can quickly kick off the final act of the movie. 

 While the visual effects are nice, the action is really stale. There is nothing special about the shaky cam multi-cut, close up obsessed way the action is filmed. And this I feel summarized this movie perfectly: lots of promise at first glance but ultimately a disappointing delivered product.

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