I skipped Borderlands when it hit theaters in late 2024, largely because of the overwhelmingly negative reviews. Panned as a messy, uninspired video game adaptation, it never seemed worth the price of admission. Instead, I waited until January—historically a dumping ground for bad movies—to check it out at home, and unfortunately, it lived up to the low expectations.
My familiarity with the Borderlands video game franchise is limited, but I played Borderlands 2 for a few hours back in the Xbox 360 days. I remember its crude humor, over-the-top action, and tongue-in-cheek, comic book-style storytelling, all of which were designed to appeal to a younger, teenage demographic. That same tone is present in the movie—except instead of feeling intentionally irreverent, it just feels grating and juvenile.
The film follows a group of misfits on a mission to rescue a missing girl who holds the key to a powerful weapon on the planet Pandora. The team is led by Lilith (Cate Blanchett), a bounty hunter with a complicated past who has been on the run since her mother’s death. She assembles an unlikely crew, including Kevin Hart as Roland, Jamie Lee Curtis as Tannis, and Florian Munteanu as Krieg. These are some of the most iconic characters from the Borderlands games, played by a cast of accomplished actors who, for the most part, feel completely miscast. Blanchett, in particular, is so overqualified for this material that her attempt to inject any real weight into the film just makes everything around her feel even more cartoonish by comparison.
And that’s the real problem—nothing here lands the way it’s supposed to. The jokes aren’t funny, the stakes don’t feel urgent, and the characters lack any real depth or charm. Borderlands is what happens when you take the desert landscapes of better 2024 blockbusters like Dune: Part Two and Furiosa, strip away their artistry, cut the budget in half, and hand the script to a 15-year-old who thinks excessive shouting is the height of comedy. It’s visually bland, narratively uninspired, and frustratingly tedious.
It’s difficult to say exactly where the blame should fall. Eli Roth, who wrote and directed the film, is a filmmaker I’ve enjoyed in the past. His 2023 slasher Thanksgiving was a fun, self-aware horror flick that leaned into its own absurdity. But Borderlands is an awkward mismatch of styles—Roth tries to maintain the chaotic energy of the games while also injecting his own sensibilities, and the result is a tonal disaster. The humor is forced, the action is forgettable, and the overall execution feels rushed and uninspired.
Maybe this was a doomed project from the start. Video game adaptations are notoriously difficult to pull off, and the idea of a Borderlands movie led by Cate Blanchett and Kevin Hart always felt like an odd fit. Their acting styles, combined with Eli Roth’s directorial approach, were never going to align into something cohesive. The result is exactly what I feared—a loud, obnoxious, and utterly forgettable misfire that does little justice to its source material.
Rating: 3/10
Borderlands (2024)
- Cast: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Edgar Ramírez, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu, Janina Gavankar, Jack Black, Benjamin Byron Davis, Olivier Richters, Gina Gershon
- Director: Eli Roth
- Genre: Action, Comedy, Science Fiction
- Runtime: 101 minutes
- Rated: PG-13
- Release Date: August 9, 2024
More Movies Starring Cate Blanchett
Cate Blanchett has starred in the following movies:
- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
- Carol (2015)
- Ocean’s Eight (2018)
- Don’t Look Up (2021)
- TÁR (2022)
- Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)
- Borderlands (2024)
More Movies Starring Kevin Hart
Kevin Hart has starred in the following movies:
- This is the End (2013)
- Get Hard (2015)
- Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
- Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)
- Fatherhood (2021)
- Lift (2024)
- Borderlands (2024)