I have never played Borderland game. Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone play any of these games, so I’m a complete newbie to the franchise. I can’t tell you how the movie compares to the source material, and I have no idea if hardcore fans will like the way this IP has been translated to the big screen. I’m just a movie fan who thought the trailers for Borderland showed potential, so I thought I’d give the film a chance. I bought a ticket for opening weekend hoping for an entertaining night, and as I walked into the theater, I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

Borderland The film was directed and co-written by Eli Roth and stars Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Edgar Ramírez, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu and Jamie Lee Curtis. In the film, Lilith is a skilled bounty hunter who is hired to find a girl named Tiny Tina and return her to her father, but things don’t quite go according to plan.

Instead of fulfilling her contractual obligations, Lilith forms a small team of six members – herself, Tina, a soldier named Roland, a muscle-bound brute named Krieg, a vaguely star Wars-like robot named Claptrap and a scientist named Tannis – and they set out to find a long-lost vault that contains unexplained secrets. Along the way, they must battle wild monsters, dangerous bandits and Tina’s father while trying to complete their new mission and protect each other.

As you may have seen from this brief summary, Borderland is very much in the style of recent films such as Guardians of the Galaxy And Suicide Squad Franchises. It’s about a group of misfits who come together seemingly by chance, and as they work together to achieve a common goal, they become more than just partners. They eventually become family.

Films like this generally stand or fall almost exclusively on the strength of their characters, and unfortunately Borderland in this respect, it fails completely. Every single one of the main actors in this film is, at best, yawningly boring and, at worst, almost unbearable.

Take Claptrap, for example. He’s programmed to crack a sarcastic joke every three seconds or so, and on paper that sounds right up my alley. But in practice, this robot is as embarrassing as it gets. He’s just not funny, and after knowing him for just a few minutes, I couldn’t stand his constant barrage of uninspired humor any longer.

Similarly, Roland is played by Kevin Hart, and in typical Kevin Hart fashion, this character provides quite a bit of comic relief. But in untypical Kevin Hart fashion, he’s not funny either. Granted, he’s not nearly as bad as Claptrap, so I didn’t mind seeing him on screen. But I still didn’t like the guy, so he doesn’t matter. Borderland any favors.

Next we’ll talk about war. If you like Tom Hardy’s Bane (from The Dark Knight Rises) and transplanted it into a Mad Max In the movie he would probably look very similar to Krieg, but personality-wise this guy is more like the Bane we saw in Batman and Robin. He’s all brawn and no brains, and to emphasize his less than stellar intellect, the film doesn’t let him talk much. Instead, he just says a few words now and then, and each time he does, he speaks with a ridiculously over-the-top enthusiasm that ends up making him as annoying as anyone else in Borderland.

I have only played through about half of the main characters in this film, but I think that is enough to make my point. Everyone in Borderland is incredibly unlikable, and since this story is really all about the characters, they infect every other element of the film and ruin the entire experience.

Take action, for example. I often say in my reviews that horror is only effective if you care about the people in danger, and action is no different. If you don’t care about the characters or their story, even the best fights and stunts you can imagine will end up being little more than visual noise, and that’s exactly what happens here.

Taken on its own, the action in Borderland isn’t bad. If the characters were better, I might have even liked it, but since Lilith and her crew are forgettable at best, even their craziest actions couldn’t elicit more than a bored shrug from me.

Likewise, the story of this film isn’t Oscar-worthy, but for the most part, it’s not bad. I actually think it’s decent enough that it would have worked for the most part if I loved the characters, but since I didn’t like anyone in the film, I didn’t care about their journey either.

However, the story in Borderland has some very noticeable flaws on its own. The most obvious is a twist that you can see coming miles ahead, and shortly after that big reveal, the narrative takes a ridiculous turn that had me rolling my eyes almost as often as Claptrap’s awkward attempts at being funny. I can’t go into detail without spoiling the film’s surprises, but trust me, the narrative takes a major step down in the last 20 to 30 minutes or so.

To be fair, Borderland is not the worst film I have seen this year. It is not quite as bad as Tarot and the infamous Madame Web (for safety reasons we can also Argyll on this list to make an unholy trinity of terrible cinema of 2024), but it’s not far behind. The weak characters ruin what would otherwise be at least a decent experience, so skip it if you’re looking for something good to watch this weekend Borderland and look cuckoo instead. You’ll be glad you did.

Borderland is currently in cinemas.