Borderlands
Lilith likes to think of herself as a high class bounty hunter, and in some circumstances that might be true, but judging her by the company she currently keeps put things in perspective, for while her employer Atlas has offered her a significant sum to find his kidnapped daughter, on the wrecked world of Pandora where Tina is hidden in a booby-trapped house of dolls Lilith is surrounded by individuals and hostile hordes less inclined to soap and water.
A frontier planet of treasure hunters, mercenaries and tour guides, Pandora is supposedly home to the mythical vault of the Eridians, the long-vanished elder species of the galaxy who are said to have left fragments of their technology behind, prophecy speaking of a daughter of their people who will open it, Tina believing that she is that person with her “kidnapping” arranged to rescue her from her father whose true interest is in finding the vault.
Based on the Gearbox videogame of the same name, Borderlands is a film of bothersome people with a troubled production history, listed as being directed by Thanksgiving’s Eli Roth but with reshoots undertaken by Deadpool’s Tim Miller two years after principal photography and with significant rewrites on the script, yet what has arrived on screen is remarkably coherent, if a wild west science fiction action adventure driven by guns and explosions can ever truly be said to be coherent.
Starring Ragnarok’s Cate Blanchett as Lilith, she is resigned to a job she did not choose and swiftly aware the desert sands are shifting beneath her, Atlas obviously not to be trusted from his first holographic appearance because he is played by The Last Days of American Crime’s Édgar Ramírez, alongside Ariana Greenblatt, Kevin Hart and Florian Munteanu as Tina, rogue soldier Roland and “Psycho” Krieg with Jack Black as the voice of servo droid Claptrap, only marginally less annoying than if he were present in person.
The planet Pandora resembling the iconic Vasquez Rocks copied and pasted into a virtual environment over and over, that repetition is emblematic of a film which feels familiar from the opening frames, the ancient aliens, the promise of their power, the chosen one, the hard faced bounty hunter who isn’t actually all that bad once you get on her good side, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Firefly, Mad Max, Tank Girl and a half dozen others fed into a blender and jet washed over the screen, yet that familiarity makes the supposedly dangerous Borderlands comfortably enjoyable.
Blanchett playing Lilith with laidback indifference contrasting with Jamie Lee Curtis’ focus as xeno archaeologist and Eridian expert Doctor Patricia Tannis, the big final act twist does not need a montage to recap the clues, but the journey through the Borderlands is swift, moving through the puddles of toxic chemical waste with alacrity and humour without dwelling and ending exactly where it should, a lesson in efficiency and brevity which many similar films could learn from.
Borderlands is currently on general release
