Borderlands film review: Action-packed but lacks depth

Borderlands (M, 102 minutes)

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Every few months I become a PlayStation widow for a few weeks at a time as a new single-person computer game comes out and my other half sits in front of the TV and cannot be interrupted until the game is played through.

In 2009 the game was Borderlands (and then in 2011 it was Borderlands 2), a spacey shoot-'em-up type thing.

Being a PlayStation widow isn't like being a real widow, with real grieving and sadness, it's more like going on a vacation from your relationship without leaving the couch, while you read two novels in a weekend and cook a lasagne, and your partner sitting right next to you will speak for the first time in nine hours to say something like "Oh, it's 2am? I'll just finish this level."

Borderlands has a local connection - it was published by 2K Australia, a company that had its home in Canberra but now sadly has gone the way of the dinosaur.

This film version is a fast moving and frenetic blur of motion and ideas that doesn't let up for a moment from the first frame to the last and I think that is both its strength and its undoing.

Usually a horror director, Eli Roth makes a surprisingly tame and, if it wasn't for all the violence, almost family-friendly film.

Veteran bounty hunter Lilith (Cate Blanchett) might feel like she's seen one bar fight too many, but when she is hired by the chief executive officer of the Atlas Corporation (Edgar Ramirez) to track down his kidnapped daughter Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), she reluctantly agrees.

On the planet of Pandora - apparently not the one from Avatar, this one is brown and filthy - she discovers that Tina is fully capable of looking after herself and in fact has herself two bodyguards in soldier Roland (Kevin Hart) and a berserker named Krieg (Florian Munteanu).

Turns out Tina might be the key to some interdimensional treasure her pop wants to get his hands on, and Lilith leans on pals Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Moxxi (Gina Gershon) to help find a way to save the girl.

These games have a huge fan base who are either going to be excited to see familiar characters on screen, or more likely are going to shoot this film full of verbal barbs online for the many ways it isn't exactly like a 15-year-old video game.

Having not played the game, I can say that it is fun to watch but feels indistinguishable from Guardians of the Galaxy, similar jokes, just a different cast.

The screenplay from Roth and Joe Crombie is occasionally funny and much of the best lines and physical comedy belong to the triangular robot Claptrap (Jack Black).

Hart for once doesn't play himself but actually inhabits his stern-faced soldier character and I'm all for it. I think I'm coming around to mid-career Hart who seems to have learned you don't need to scream all your dialogue to command attention.

In Absolutely Fabulous, Edina Monsoon once said, "My whole body just hangs off these cheekbones," and that's how I experienced Blanchett in this film.

As the ginger-haired bounty hunter, Blanchett is fun without cracking a smile, full of references like being "too old for this (expletive)" echoing Danny Glover from Lethal Weapon.

She could cut a man with those cheekbones alone, but she makes a good physical action hero with balletic movement. I can see why she was attracted to this silly but fun video game film, with three generations of strong female lead, playing off Greenblatt (the human daughter from the Barbie film) and icon Jamie Lee Curtis.

Visually, the film is constantly moving, when just taking a few moments' pause might have allowed us to connect with and care about its characters more.

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