Critic Reviews

Blanchett knows exactly what movie she's in, and she seems to be having the time of her life fitting herself into the mold of a video game heroine.

Borderlands is a fun ride, but a bloated cast and breakneck pacing don’t allow it to reach its full potential.

Borderlands is the one kind of movie that’s the hardest to get excited about: the kind that lands in the middle space between a project with its own strong identity, and a compromised adaptation trying to play to the masses. It’s tough to live in the borderlands.

If granted permission to bring his signature sadism to these infamously batshit characters, Roth could have delivered his “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Instead, restricted by standards that seem equally unlikely to please preteens, he was left holding a bomb.

The Gearbox title gamers loved has spawned a frenetic and disorderly shambles they’re likelier to loathe. Claptrap? You said it.

Marketed to look like a cross between “Suicide Squad” and a Zack Snyder movie, director Eli Roth’s tamer-than-expected take on “Borderlands” doesn’t have half the attitude or style its cyberpunk ad campaign might suggest.

Borderlands makes a point of not being different enough to upset the fanbase, but it's also not unique enough to win over new audiences, either. It's a movie for everyone and no one, a film so unwilling to make a splash that it barely makes a peep.

There are snatches of crude enjoyment to be had, if you venture in with basement-level expectations, and manage to ignore some dire third act CGI. Roth’s fetish for gloating nastiness in his other work makes it hard to decry the mutilation of whatever his original vision might have been. For once, he’s at the receiving end of a rusty blade, instead of wielding it

You can see the jokes, but most of them don’t land. Still, there is some neat design work if you squint.

A botched Guardians wannabe that isn’t half as fun as you’d hope from the punky sci-fi promise of its video-game source material and the presence of Blanchett at the top of the cast list.