Movie Poster

I'm a bounty hunter, not a baby sitter.

# Review

I’m flying to SF again which means I get to watch movies I would normally not watch. This time it’s the film based on the popular shooter RPG with the same name. I’ve actually played the first Borderlands game so I have a bit of context for the film. The story of the film follows Lilith (Cate Blanchett), a bounty hunter who travels to the frontier planet Pandora to rescue the kidnapped Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), the daughter of powerful corporate magnate Atlas (Édgar Ramírez).

If I had to describe the movie with one word it’d be “generic”; the film feels soulless in both its story and its characters. The story is different from that of the games but is honestly very uninspiring in its deviation. It does feel that the story is written in such a way as to show (but not develop) as many of the characters from the game as possible. The characters are paper thin and I didn’t find myself particularly invested in their development. The dialogue is also overly verbose with a ton of lazy story exposition. The film went for the comedic angle, casting a ton of comedians such as Kevin Hart as Roland, Jack Black as Claptrap, and even Bobby Lee as a soldier. Unfortunately, the script fell so flat that I felt like I was watching a kid’s movie with very shallow humour. The action sequences are decent but definitely hindered by the PG-13 rating (I'm surprised Roth, a member of the Splat Pack, would make something so family friendly).

# Conclusion

A very generic and unmemorable film.

# Overall rating: 6.3

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