BORDERLANDS

BORDERLANDS is a science fiction adventure about three people and a quirky robot, led by a female bounty hunter, who protect a 13-year-old girl who may be the key to finding and opening a hidden vault of powerful alien technology on a ravaged planet filled with roaming bandits and mercenaries. Based on a popular video game series, BORDERLANDS features lots of action, colorful characters, a good cast, and a strong moral, redemptive premise with Christian metaphors, but there are many deadly gun battles and explosions between the heroes and the bad guys, lots of moderately heavy foul language, an implied feminist perspective about women, brief scatological jokes, and some ambiguous spiritual content that isn’t resolved.

The movie opens with a former soldier named Roland, played by Kevin Hart, rescuing a diminutive 13-year-old girl named Tina from a prison cell on a ravaged planet called Pandora. Ronald successfully rescues Tina, with the help of another prisoner, a large bandit named Krieg, played by Florian Munteanu.

Meanwhile, Roland’s former boss, Mr. Atlas (Edgar Ramirez), the head of an oppressive galactic corporation, hires a female bounty hunter named Lilith, played by Cate Blanchett, to find Tina on Pandora. Lilith is reluctant to go, because Pandora is her home planet, and she has bad memories about it. Mining wars have ravaged the planet. Also, many people have come to the planet because of rumors that an ancient alien race hid vaults of its powerful technology there. However, Atlas offers Lilith enough money to make it worth her while, so she agrees. Atlas is keeping a secret about Tina’s identity from Lilith, however.

Lilith arrives on Pandora and soon locates Tina, who’s being protected by Roland and Krieg. She learns Atlas lied to her about Tina. Atlas isn’t Tina’s father, he’s her creator. He created Tina by using a blood sample from the long gone alien race that once ruled the galaxy. Atlas thinks Tina may be the key to finding a major vault of alien technology hidden somewhere on the planet. He wants to use the technology to make himself even more powerful in the galaxy, in an evil, totalitarian way.

Lilith and her wisecracking robot, Claptrap, voiced by Jack Black, join Roland and Krieg in protecting Tina. They consult a female scientist, Patricia Tannis, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, to help them find the hidden vault before Atlas and his mercenary army do.

BORDERLANDS has echoes of all the STAR WARS knockoffs that came out of Hollywood and foreign countries in the late 1970s and 80s, like 1984’s THE ICE PIRATES and 1978’s STARCRASH. So, the movie is meant partly to be a B-movie celebration of such science fiction flicks, in addition to being an adaptation of the popular video game series developed by Gearbox Software.

As such, BORDERLANDS has lots of action and some humor. Most of the humor comes from Jack Black’s voice work playing Claptrap the robot. The BORDERLANDS video games are known for their wisecracking humor. So, Director and Co-Writer Eli Roth gives the rest of his cast plenty of chances to crack wise and comically entertain moviegoers.

In addition to having the advantage of a good cast, Roth retains the major colorful heroes from the first and second BORDERLANDS games. The characters of Lilith, Roland, Krieg, Claptrap, and Tina will be familiar to BORDERLANDS fans. He does make a few changes, however, especially to Lilith and Tina’s background. For example, without giving away the movie’ ending, Lilith is given a long-lost mother and a new secret identity that’s revealed in the movie’s ending. However, part of that ending seems to leave viewers confused and hanging. So, MOVIEGUIDE® was left wondering about Lilith’s secret identity, especially its ultimate significance. Also, the movie’s revelation of what’s actually in the hidden vault is also confusing. Viewers familiar with the video game series may know more about it, but the movie isn’t quite clear. It has something to do with the intent of the long-lost alien race that created the alien technologies, the treasures on Pandora and in the galaxy and one of the monsters in the video games. Roth makes a change to the monsters in the video games. So, that change muddied the waters even more so.

BORDERLANDS could have been more entertaining. Some of the action in the middle, for instance, could have been more compelling. Happily, however, the movie has a moral, redemptive premise with Christian allusions. For example, Lilith and Tannis don’t know whether they should let Tina open the hidden vault when they find it. That’s because they don’t know if the experience will kill Tina or not. Lilith notes, however, that “salvation” isn’t possible without “sacrifice.” They don’t force Tina to try opening the vault. In the end, though, Tina decides to try opening it anyway. Especially when Atlas shows up with all his mercenary soldiers.

A twist occurs at the end, however. The good news is that the twist includes a metaphorical death and resurrection that continues the movie’s Christian, redemptive allusions to “salvation.”

The BORDERLANDS movie also has two positive plot developments. First, the heroes band together to protect Tina from the villain and his minions. In fact, Lilith takes a motherly interest in protecting Tina. Secondly, the movie gives Lilith a back story where her mother sent her away when Lilith was a young girl, to protect her from the bad things happening on Pandora. To enhance this emotional power of this subplot, Director Eli Roth inserts two flashbacks with a young Lilith and her mother.

All that said, however, BORDERLANDS has some other content that warrants light to extreme caution.

For example, though it’s not particular bloody or gory, the movie has lots of strong, intense action scenes. There are lots of gun battles and some deadly energy beams, plus a bunch of explosions. So, the body count in BORDERLANDS is a bit high, especially in the battle scenes with hordes of bandits attacking the heroes.

Also, there are two scatological events. In the first, the heroes encounter the waste of a giant monster in one sequence. In the second, the robot empties many spent bullets out of his body after being shot multiple times by the psychotic underground bandits.

BORDERLANDS also has an implied feminist perspective about women. For example, though she develops maternal feelings for Tina, Lilith is a tough female bounty hunter. Also, the new soldier in charge of the villain’s mercenary force is a woman who used to work closely with Roland, the former leader. Finally, Tina is adept at creating explosives and sometimes uses a gun. Beyond that, however, the movie doesn’t appear to make any annoying politically correct points about the macho traits among these three women.

Finally, BORDERLANDS has a mythic reference to a savior goddess or protective goddess called Firehawk on Pandora. This reference returns in the movie’s ending, but the ending doesn’t confirm that there is such a goddess. It leaves the issue pretty ambiguous, perhaps out of fear of not offending people, such as Christians or Muslims. So, the movie’s ending leaves the goddess idea as more of a metaphor for the powerful alien technology that everyone in the movie seeks. In the end, no real goddess appears, but no real god appears either, in BORDERLANDS.

Be that as it may, MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution for the combination of violence, foul language and spiritual ambiguity in BORDERLANDS.