Lilith (Cate Blanchett) and a ragtag crew of miscreants are searching the planet of Pandora for the infamous Vault left there by an advanced alien race. 

Lilith is initially sent on a rescue mission to save Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) from her kidnapper Roland (Kevin Hart) before she realises she has been duped. Joining forces with them is the mono-wheeled robot Claptrap (Jack Black), scientist Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Psycho Krieg (Florian Munteanu). The team proceed to shoot and explode their way through hordes of nameless enemies on their way to the prize. 

Based on the computer game of the same name by Gearbox software, Borderlands is a perfectly serviceable, but completely forgettable video game adaptation.

It seems churlish to complain that a film adaptation being incredibly faithful to its game counterpart has resulted in a rather tedious and dull film but people do not spend hundreds of hours on the video game version of Pandora for the plot. They do it for the near infinite range of weapons that you are constantly getting better more powerful versions of. But if the film stopped every ten minutes for its characters to assess what weapons they just looted the film might actually manage to be worse than it already is. 

The characters, places and weapons are all incredibly faithful in appearance to the game. As is the fact that the team mow down wave upon wave of nameless enemies on their journey. Whilst the childish innuendo strewn humour is spot on as epitomised by Claptrap’s constant wittering. But none of the characters have any semblance of an identity and without a knowing nod of who is who from the game I doubt anyone would care about them. Other than Lilith having mother issues everyone else is a cipher. Kevin Hart’s Roland who is the second name on the credits literally has no backstory or reason for his actions. The result is a film that looks like the game but feels entirely empty from a plot or emotion standpoint. Which brings me full circle back to my point that some might argue this is a very faithful and successful adaptation! 

Being faithful is no excuse for being bad though. The television adaptation of Fallout released this year was a huge success. Another video game adaptation set in a similarly violent dystopian wasteland that managed to be both faithful and incredibly engaging. 

Young fans of the Borderlands franchise may find themselves amused. Otherwise it just seems like a huge waste of a lot of fantastic talent.