Borderlands is unlike other video game movies (in a good way).

Cate Blanchett as Lilith, Ariana Greenblatt as Tiny Tina, Kevin Hart as Roland, Florian Munteanu as Krieg and Jamie Lee Curtis as Tannis in Borderlands. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Lionsgate

About halfway through Borderlands, director Eli Roth holds the camera on Jamie Lee Curtis‘s natural face, while her character, (Dr Patricia) Tannis is introduced. Curtis is 65 years old and a recent Oscar winner with a storied film career. The camera then trails downwards and holds on Tannis’s ample cleavage, because Curtis, as anyone who has watched Trading Places, Perfect or True Lies knows, also has a great rack. The camera returns to her face causing a generation of fanboys to expire from a severe case of mass confusion brought on by cognitive dissonance. Because, in the gaming world, many, many female characters are known for their breasts and sex work is par for the course, but none of them marry that hourglass figure with 65-year-old facial features. And there’s more. Curtis is not the only character over 30 in Borderlands with a beautiful body, with Gina Gershon (62) also showing up as Mad Moxxi. A bar-owner/brawl-runner, Moxxi is one of many crazy characters populating the trash planet location of this movie, Pandora.

Based on the best-selling video game franchise, Borderlands stars Cate Blanchett (55, 2 x Oscar winner) as Lilith, former Pandoran and current bounty hunter forced to work for tech autocrat Atlas (Edgar Ramirez, 47) to retrieve his “special” daughter, Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt, 16). Tina has been kidnapped by soldier Roland (Kevin Hart, 45) and psychotic bandit (the game’s words, not ours) Krieg (Florian Muntaeanu, 33) who are now on the run on Pandora. While searching for them, Lilith meets robot CL4P-TP (Jack Black, 54) who has been programmed to assist her should she return to her home planet. But of course, everything isn’t quite as it seems.

Borderlands neither strictly adheres to the plot of any of the video games, nor does it use the game voice actors, making it very watchable for anyone not familiar with the canon. Roth uses trademark flair to keep the action moving, ensuring that the stakes are clear in a dayglo setting that mixes Furiosa’s desert with the scorched earth of Pixar’s Wall-e. Roth also plays with stereotypes, with Hart playing it (mostly) straight as heroic and in control, Blanchett being an action star and Greenblatt getting to be gleefully unstable. With the buddy vibes of Jumanji and Guardians of the Galaxy and jokes that are silly but never too crude, Borderlands has a more family feel than many expected from the game and from Roth’s back catalogue. The film is  also full of neat fights and explosions while cleverly avoiding ultra-violence.

In this new era of gaming cinema, Borderlands offers a different take on the usual gun-toting, testosterone-fuelled gore fest. Those who want blood, guts and pegging jokes are already well-served so there’s plenty of room for this joyfully kick-ass neon adventure.