Mortal Kombat (2021) Review
Official synopsis:
Washed-up MMA fighter Cole Young, unaware of his heritage, and hunted by Emperor Shang Tsung’s best warrior, Sub-Zero, seeks out and trains with Earth’s greatest champions as he prepares to stand against the enemies of Outworld in a high stakes battle for the universe.
If you are not familiar (or even interested) with the video game Mortal Kombat then feel free to skip this review and the movie. This one has been made for the fans!
Mortal Kombat presents us with a diverse cast of characters portrayed by actors with a diverse range of acting ability. Most are serviceable and play their roles accurately if not spectacularly. The main standout is Josh Lawson who revels as the viciously sarcastic Kano. Our main character Cole, played by Lewis Tan, works well enough as the audience’s guide as he is introduced to the increasingly bizarre world of Mortal Kombat.
For a world hopping movie the locations are serviceable with a few attempts at grandeur that don’t quite succeed. Most of the action occurs indoors or in more contained areas reflective of the source material’s fight locations. A bit too long is spent in the thunder god Raiden’s desert temple which has little flair to liven up the atmosphere.
But, of course, we need to talk about the fight scenes since that is the core of the Mortal Kombat experience. This is where the movie shines. They are fast paced, well choreographed and really allow individual traits to shine. Many of the signature moves, and powers, from the game make an appearance along with lines the makers of this movie knew the fans wanted to hear. One of the main facets that were promised were the fatalities and, yes, they sure do deliver with over the top blood spattered gore aplenty.
While the fight scenes shine this movie based on a fighting game makes you wait a bit too long for them with the biggest action saved for the third act. The journey to get to them is full of video game movie tropes such as explanatory text on screen, the action stopping so one character can explain the plot to others and the bad guys explaining their plans a few times over up to and including telling the good guys.
Ultimately the enjoyment you get from this movie will relate directly to how much enjoyment you get from Mortal Kombat or dumb martial arts movies. This movie has the potential to be a crowd pleaser, as long as that crowd is the type that will cheer their favourite characters and lines like “flawless victory ” and “fatality”. If you are a big fan plenty of room has been left for a sequel with more characters and wriggle room to allow even the decapitated, dismembered and otherwise deceased characters to reappear.
This is an improvement over the 1995 attempt, but hard to recommend if you are not already a Mortal Kombat fan.
(Disclaimer: I was provided free tickets and goodies courtesy of Universal Pictures and Warner Bros).
