Age is something that comes for those of us blessed with a long-ish life.  In other words, we get old(er).  It is inevitable.  It is part of God’s plan for us.  If we care about such things, and I pray that you do, our relationship with God changes and matures over time, hopefully growing deeper.  These ideas can also be applied in a non-spiritual sense, though I will use a quote from the Bible to lead you into it.  After all, this is a Catholic movie review blog.  1 Corinthians 13:11 says, “When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.”  I thought about this while making my way to the theater to see Borderlands.  For one thing, though this is not special to today’s film, I no longer wait until the wee hours of a weekend night to catch a flick, preferring to do a Thursday matinee as early in the day as possible.  This has a practical function for me getting reviews out for new releases, but I also go to bed sometimes before it is dark so as to be able to wake up and get in a run before the sun is fully risen.  As such, I tend to be amongst an audience of people even older than myself.  While the cinema was sparsely populated for my viewing, there was a couple of an advanced age.  What I wondered while looking at them was whether they were aware that what they were about to see was based on a video game.  I stopped playing video games, for the most part, a few years before this one debuted in 2009, but at least I was aware of its origin.  Either way, you do not have to be a young gamer to know that this movie stinks.

Please forgive me for not being charitable to Borderlands so soon.  Still, it does not want to do you any favors from the beginning.  There is some opening monologue narrated by heroine Lilith (Cate Blanchett) involving a race of aliens from the planet Pandora.  By the way, Hollywood, there are other names for celestial bodies, but I digress.  Something happened to these galactic conquerors, but they left behind a vault full of technology that, as it is prophesied, would one day be opened by one of their ancestors.  But, enough of that mumbo-jumbo, let us get to the action.  Somewhere there is a prison being attacked by an elite soldier named Roland (Kevin Hart).  He is there to free a little girl named Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), the daughter of arms manufacturer Atlas (Edgar Ramírez).  In the midst of the jail break, they are joined by a Psycho named Krieg (Florian Monteanu).  That is not a comment on his mental condition, but rather what his tribe on Pandora call themselves.  Before we get further along, we are introduced properly to bounty hunter Lilith.  As she is on the verge of completing another contract, she is approached by proxies working for Atlas to recover Tiny Tina.  Given that he gives off a creepy vibe, and she is cantankerous to boot, she initially says no.  The substantial down payment he makes for the job convinces her otherwise.  She goes despite wanting no part of being Pandora, the place she left as a child.  When she arrives, though immediately setting to work finding Tiny Tina, everyone she meets assumes that she is one of the myriad vault hunters looking for ancient treasure.  Everyone, that is, except for Claptrap (voiced by Jack Black).  He is a diminutive, yet tough, one-wheeled robot who, for reasons not immediately clear, reactivates and finds Lilith as soon as she lands.  She does not care for his company, but her shooing goes ignored.  He does prove useful, though, in analyzing the picture of Tiny Tina and pinpointing her location.  Upon getting to the quarry where she has taken shelter, she feigns wanting to reunite with Atlas.  The bombs she tosses at Lilith, along with Krieg’s intervention, clearly state her desire to have nothing to do with Atlas.  Lilith has bigger problems when Atlas’ private army, led by Commander Knoxx (Janina Gavankar), arrives to take Tiny Tina.  It is at this point that Lilith sees how badly Tiny Tina wants to stay away from Atlas, and something about this stirs her desire to help.  They are also aided by the arrival of Roland, and they are able to motor away in a big action sequence that need not be enumerated.  From there, they make their way to the one city on Pandora that does not appear to be complete anarchy.  They are hidden for the moment by Mad Moxxi (Gina Gershon), who knew Lilith’s mother (Haley Bennett).  Mom had been a vault hunter, and probably the foremost expert on the subject.  Before she died, Lilith had been passed to her partner Dr. Patricia Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis).  Of course, this is the one to which our band of misfits are next sent, particularly when we learn more of Tiny Tina’s backstory.  She had been engineered by Atlas using the blood of the extinct Pandoran peoples, and is the key to opening the way to the treasure.  Lilith, though, is not thrilled about seeing Dr. Tannis as the researcher had left the little girl with a band of killers, making her the deadly bounty hunter she is today.  Nonetheless, Tiny Tina has won over Lilith and they travel to where they believe another key to the vault can be found.  This involves some more action which does nothing to advance the plot, other than us seeing Tiny Tina teleport everyone but Roland to safety.  One moment she does not have this power, the next moment she does.  So, yeah.  As it turns out, they are taken directly to the area near the fabled entrance.  Here, Lilith is visited by Atlas, who claims to have been following them the entire time.  This is overheard by Tiny Tina, who leaves with Krieg and Dr. Tannis in the morning.  This is done so that Lilith can conveniently visit where she lived with her mom, which triggers a recording from mom stored in Claptrap.  From this, Lilith learns that it is really her, not Tiny Tina, who is the final key.  As such, it had been her that had performed the teleportation.  She is also granted other superpowers that, along with Roland miraculously finding his way to the vault, help save the day.  It ends with a celebration back in the city where they first met Dr. Tannis.

I think you can tell based on my synopsis of Borderlands why this is not the best movie.  Perhaps if you were an aficionado of the video game, the random things that happen throughout make sense?  If so, then the people who made it committed the cardinal mistake of not trying to tailor the material to a general audience.  Yet, the biggest thing that made me wonder about the quality of the production is the wooden nature of the performances.  Put simply, none of the performers, arguably outside of Greenblatt, looked like they cared about their delivery.  This might make sense given what I discussed in the introduction and the fact that she is the youngest person on the cast.  Maybe she played the game?  Still, no matter the material, if a person signs a contract for a production, they should fulfill it to the best of their ability.  The Apostles did not always see the wisdom of what they were being asked to do, but doing it anyway brought them many blessings.  The same can be said for our lives.  Since these actors and actresses make more money than most of us will ever see in our lifetimes, it is hard to be empathetic to them having to “suffer” through the making of a horrible movie.  What it reminds me of, though, is what my dissertation director said to me on the day I graduated with my doctorate from Loyola University Chicago when I wanted to wear sunglasses during the ceremony: act like you have been there.  In the case of Blanchett and her co-stars, it would be to act like you want to be there, even if you do not want to be.  There is grace in doing so.

There is one saving grace in Borderlands that almost made me fall out of my chair when I heard it.  As they are preparing to get to the vault, it comes to light that whoever it is that opens it may have to pay with their life.  Dr. Tannis responds to this potentially dire outcome by saying that “there is no salvation without sacrifice.”  This line is repeated by Lilith when she stands in front of the vault, only to have it obviated when whatever happens turns her into a superbeing with fiery wings.  Nonetheless, the statement is absolutely true, and it aligns perfectly with Faith.  Jesus is the embodiment of these words.  Without His passion, death, and resurrection, there would be no salvation for us.  His act of all-encompassing love threw open the gates of Heaven for us to join there Him and His Father through the power of the Holy Spirit.  Every saved soul since that time is the result, particularly the body of saints venerated by the Catholic Church.  Of course, the film fails miserably in conveying any kind of Christian context in regards to Lilith’s actions.  She is touched by the memory of her mother, and this seems to make her realize who she is, actually.  However, I cannot say that she does what she does out of any real sense of love.  She may have some tender feelings for Tiny Tina, but given the problems discussed in the last paragraph, that did not come through completely.  All the same, whoever it was that wrote this nonsense, decided to use Biblical terms.  Hence, if there is anything to take away from this movie, it is the truth that sacrifice can move us closer to God.  It does not have to involve laying down our lives for someone, although with the right intent, that is one of the surer ways of gaining entrance into Heaven.  There might be smaller things in your life that distract you from having a relationship with God.  They could be evident, or require prayer and reflection for them to come to light.  Whatever they are, figuring them out is far preferable to watching this movie.

For the most part, I have been uncharitable in talking about Borderlands.  Hopefully, what I have to say is not insulting.  If I may pay it one compliment, it would be that Hart’s performance is actually not that bad, particularly as he does not resort to his usual antics.  It is as robotic as the rest, but at least he is not screaming half the time.  I wish this was enough for me to recommend it, but no.  See something else.