Writer-director Eli Roth’s handling of Borderlands is so atrocious it should be studied in film schools to teach aspiring filmmakers what not to do.
It’s astounding how Roth (Death Wish, Cabin Fever, Hostel) manages to get everything wrong in a way that’s typical of student filmmakers their first few times out, when they don’t yet know how to focus viewer attention.
To start with, his script is a mass of dull sci-fi adventure cliches. Then, the camera placement is always off — too close, too far away, somehow angled wrong so that you always feel you’re missing the clearly intended emotional gist of every shot and scene. Comic punch lines are stepped on by other business. If there’s a dramatic moment that’s supposed to be poignant, it falls flat, not only because the scene is written in such a trite way there’s no charge left in it, but also because you’ve gotten distracted again by some random visual element like Cate Blanchett’s stupid hair, a stiff orange side-sweep that’s supposed to be wildly punked out but just looks uncomfortable and silly.
The gun battles and chase scenes are retreads of a thousand action movies past. The CGI backdrops are paralyzing in their dullness.
The movie is based on the same-named video game, and it’s so bad that you immediately wonder why Blanchett, an excellent actor and a genuine film star, is debasing herself in this thing. If you google, “Why is Cate Blanchett in Borderlands?”, several sites come up immediately featuring interviews with Blanchett in which she’s asked repeated versions of that question. Her main answer tends to be that she likes to take on unexpected roles and in addition to that, she was suffering from mentally overwrought desperation when she signed on to Borderlands:
I think there also may have been a little COVID madness — I was spending a lot of time in the garden, using the chainsaw a little too freely. My husband said, “This film could save your…
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Auteur: Eileen Jones
