Movie Review: 'Borderlands' Starring Kevin Hart

Borderlands (2024)

Directed by Eli Roth

Written by Eli Roth, Joe Crombie

Starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Ariana Greenblatt Jack Black,

Release Date August 8th, 2024

Published August 8th, 2024

Borderlands is a bad movie in the least interesting way. Take, for instance, Trap, M. Night Shyamalan’s most recent film, as of this writing. I’m mildly obsessed with Trap. That is a film that is bad in a very interesting way. Trap is misbegotten. It’s a failure in every possible way but it's ambitious and unique while being objectively bad. Borderlands, on the other hand, is bad in ways that are indistinguishable from other movies. It’s boring, it’s derivative, and, despite an all-star cast and a video game playground, it lacks personality.

Cate Blanchett stars in Borderlands as Lilith, an intergalactic bounty hunter who plays by her own rules. If I had a nickel for every time a movie had a character like Lilith, I’d have enough to open a savings account at a local bank that comfortably accrues interest over time. Borderlands is boring in the same way that local banking with a small amount of money is boring. Lilith isn’t a character, she’s a collection of traits that look good in a trailer. She’s got an odd haircut, she’s sexy because Cate Blanchett is objectively sexy, and she shoots first and asks questions later just like every other cliche badass sci-fi character. (Yawn).

Lilith is an anti-hero because she takes money from an evil corporate guy played by Edgar Ramirez who making bank on being the most basic-bitch, go-to bad guy in Hollywood. The baddie wants Lilith to find his daughter. The daughter is the key to an ancient blah blah blah on some distant yadda, yadda, yadda. You get the gist. Ariana Greenblatt plays Tina, the daughter in question. Tina has been kidnapped by a mercenary named Roland (Kevin Hart) , former employee of the boring corporate villain. Roland may or may not be seeking the magic whatever it is on the wasteland planet something or other.

In a predictable wrinkle, the wasteland planet, something or other, happens to be Lilith’s home planet where she was taken away from her mother and ended up being raised by bounty hunters to become a bounty hunter. This 'plot twist' will eventually explain why Lilith is met by Claptrap (Jack Black), a one wheeled, motor-mouthed robot who will be your toy for the movie. Claptrap, I am sure, is a character in the Borderlands video game but in the movie, he serves the purpose of being the thing most likely to be made into salable merchandise. He’s BB8 and R2D2 but with a Jack Black attitude. Can’t you hear a soulless marketing executive making that exact pitch?

Something, something, Jamie Lee Curtis, something, something, Lilith's tragic backstory, something, something, we found the ancient whatsit. Blah, blah, blah. This blithering derivativeness might be worth putting up with if Borderlands had humor or personality but sadly, the film is woefully lacking in each. Kevin Hart, eager to shed his fast talking, insecure, comic persona refuses to do anything funny and, instead, turns in a deeply forgettable performance as a generic super-soldier with no identifiable personality or motivation. There are vague allusions to Roland wanting to protect Tina from some terrible fate, but the film is so vague on this point that I am assigning him the trait of loyalty to this child.

There is one more character in the ensemble, a wordless meathead in a mask. There isn’t much to say about him. He’s muscled up and he grunts, and he wears a mask. You know, Vin Diesel spent three movies saying only the words "I Am Groot" and he somehow had more personality and charm in his varying inflections on those three words than are in the entirety of this actor’s screen time in Borderlands. And Diesel isn’t the greatest actor, he’s just smart enough to follow good direction and is aided by editing that knows how to deploy his few words effectively. The point being that you can make a mostly wordless character charming and memorable if you try. No one in Borderlands appears to be trying much.

The most interesting thing, for me, about Borderlands is a bizarre coincidence that has very little to do with the movie and is more of a cosmic occurrence. The main villain of Borderlands is named Atlas. The same weekend that Borderlands is being released, the new movie It Ends With Us is also being released. In that movie, the good guy, played by Brandon Sklenar, is also named Atlas. Atlas is not a common name, it’s never appeared in the Top 100 Baby Names in America. Two characters in two different movies, on the same weekend, with characters named Atlas? That’s wild. That’s way more interesting than anything in the movie Borderlands.

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