Borderlands (2024) [4K Ultra HD]

Director: Eli Roth

Cast: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black

Release Date: October 22, 2024

A Review By: Kevin Lovell

Film Rating: 4/10
Disc Rating: 8/10

Synopsis:

Lilith, an infamous bounty hunter with a mysterious past, reluctantly returns to her home, Pandora, the most chaotic planet in the galaxy. Her mission is to find the missing daughter of Atlas, the universe’s most powerful SOB. Lilith forms an unexpected alliance with Roland, a seasoned mercenary on a mission; Tiny Tina, a feral pre-teen demolitionist; Krieg, Tina’s musclebound protector; Tannis, the oddball scientist who’s seen it all; and Claptrap, a wiseass robot. Together, this ragtag team goes on a mission to save Tiny Tina, battle alien species, and discover one of Pandora’s most explosive secrets. The fate of the universe could be in their hands — but they’ll be fighting for something more: each other. Based on one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time, welcome to Borderlands.

Based on the massively popular video game franchise, ‘Borderlands’ accompanies a bitter, yet deadly bounty hunter named Lilith who thanks to a hefty payday reluctantly travels back to her home planet of Pandora; a chaotic planet filled with criminals, thieves and various vault hunters in search of a rumored vault that contains priceless knowledge stored by those who previous ran things. In order to collect her payday Lilith must track down the missing daughter of Atlas who was kidnapped and last reported on the planet, but as Lilith makes contact with the girl named Tina she discovers that nothing is quite what it appears to be. Joining forces with a soldier named Roland and Tina’s dedicated muscular protector Krieg, while also assisted by a strange robot named Claptrap with a wisecracking attitude, the group embarks on a dangerous and violent quest to avoid captivity and potentially locate the mysterious vault which Tina herself might just be the key to unlocking.

Directed by Eli Roth (Thanksgiving, Hostel) from a screenplay that he additionally co-wrote with Joe Crombie from Roth’s own screen story, Roth does a decent job at the helm of ‘Borderlands’ guiding along the constant violence and erratic fun with style. The film’s noteworthy cast includes Cate Blanchett (Nightmare Alley), Kevin Hart (Jumanji: The Next Level), Jack Black (Kung Fu Panda 4), Edgar Ramírez (Jungle Cruise), Ariana Greenblatt (Barbie), Florian Munteanu (Creed II), Gina Gershon (Thanksgiving) and Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween Ends) who each offer generally capable performances for the most part in their respective roles.

‘Borderlands’ is a chaotic, violent and sloppily jumbled ride that delivers some fun and lengthy action sequences paired with some solid visual effects on occasion, but as a whole fails to find anything for viewers to really latch onto or actually care enough about to make the journey worthwhile. It is worth noting that I’m not much of a gamer and therefore have never played the games that serve as the film’s basis, nor am I overly familiar with the story or characters within, therefore my opinion here is based solely on the film itself and I’m unfortunately unable to provide any comparisons to the game or offer any insight on the accuracy of characters and environments.

Perhaps my lack of knowledge regarding the ‘Borderlands’ game that the movie is based upon could be part of the reason that I did find myself enjoying the film at times or why I couldn’t find any real complaints about the casting. The film does stand out thanks to a noteworthy cast of stars and largely capable performances by most of the key cast (especially Blanchett who is quite a lot of fun as the dangerous bounty hunter Lilith) and if you can let your mind slip away and just go for the ride, then it can have its charms, but don’t expect any of the star power to do a great deal to improve upon the sloppy and often incoherent story and approach of the movie, let alone the numerous scenes that seem to go on far longer than necessary.

Unfortunately even with some long-running action sequences and futuristic elements that look quite good (although some of them also look pretty bad at the same time somehow) they never seem to lead to anything of note and instead play out like an excuse to fill the runtime with as much violence as possible, and thanks to the more family friendly PG-13 rating it carries the excess of violence is almost entirely lacking of bloodshed which can be a bit baffling in its own right when looking at it from a realistic perspective. For those who are fans of the game or fans of filmmaker Eli Roth and/or the talented cast within, ‘Borderlands’ might be worth giving a shot one evening if you don’t have anything important to do, but I would strongly encourage renting it before purchasing a copy just to be safe.

VIDEO:

The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release of ‘Borderlands’ features a full 2160p Ultra High Definition presentation with Dolby Vision and HDR-10, presented in its original 2.39:1 Aspect Ratio. The video presentation looks spectacular as a whole and delivers a sharp, clean, colorful and beautifully detailed presentation from start to finish that never suffers from any unexpected troubles arising along the way. Detail is tremendous on character faces and attire, along with the vehicles, desert-like landscapes and pretty much everything else that hits the screen at one point or another. The Dolby Vision HDR complements a great deal of it by providing a more lifelike color palette that fine tunes the open landscapes, some clothing and even Lilith’s hair, with all of it further enhanced by clean, deep and problem free black levels. Overall, this is a wonderful Ultra High Definition presentation that impresses at every turn and should easily thrill fans and newcomers alike.

AUDIO:

The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release features a Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 channel compatible) soundtrack. Please note that this review pertains solely to the Dolby TrueHD 7.1 audio presentation. This multichannel soundtrack is a blast and it offers a clean, crisp and wildly aggressive audio presentation throughout. It constantly takes full advantage of all seven available channels in order to send bullets, vehicles and explosions whipping throughout the various speakers with regularity, along with music, bits of dialogue and plenty more, while always making certain that any dialogue or other audio elements that might be occurring simultaneously with one another remain clean and fully audible at all times. Overall, this is a marvelous Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 compatible) soundtrack that does a great job of enhancing the action and fun throughout and doesn’t disappoint whatsoever.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release of ‘Borderlands’ features a collection of Behind the Scenes Featurettes that explore different aspects of bringing the film to life and featuring interviews/comments with the cast and crew, plus behind the scenes footage and more. Included are ‘Borderlands: From Game to Screen’ (running approximately 5 minutes in length), ‘Meet the Team’ (running approximately 4 minutes), ‘All Aboard the Death Choochoo’ (approximately 5 minutes), ‘Bringing Borderlands to the Screen’ (5 minutes), ‘Badonkadonk Time’ (5 minutes), ‘Fashion and Action on Pandora’ (7 minutes) and ‘High-Tech Hellscapes’ (9 minutes).

*Please note that the above images are taken from the Blu-Ray disc included in the 4K UHD Combo Pack and resized. They do not represent the quality of the 4K Ultra HD disc itself and will additionally suffer quality loss as a result of .jpg compression. Larger versions of each image can be viewed by clicking on the image. All images and content included on the 4K UHD & Blu-Ray release are the property of their respective owners.

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Film Rating: 4/10
Disc Rating: 8/10

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‘Borderlands’ is Now Available to Own on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD & Digital from Lionsgate

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You can purchase ‘Borderlands’ on 4K UHD at Amazon HERE!

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