Mortal Kombat

Earth is on the verge of annihilation. After nine victories by Outworld, they are one loss away from the Earth being conquered. Cole Young (Lewis Tan), Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), and Liu Kang (Ludi Lin) must defeat the warriors of ruthless Outworld Emperor Shang Tsung (Chin Han).

This is a violent, hard-R reboot of the video game adaptation from the 90's. It has scraped off the cheese and speckled on some more action. The special effects are mostly up to date. It's very competent like the competent acting, action, and designs. The story is basic and set up to have more movies in the franchise. Josh Lawson is funny as Kano. The others are less charismatic. The missing ingredient is an A-list actor or an old action star doing a side role cameo. It's an old Hollywood trick but it works. It would give this the illusion of an A-list movie. As it stands, this is a well made B-movie and it's probably enough to continue as a B-movie franchise. Sadly, that road is usually downhill but maybe it could be a long ride.

I am not that biggest Mortal Kombat fanatic, I would at best describe myself as a casual fan of the property, I played the first three games endlessly as a kid and watched the short lived animated series, short lived live-action TV series, and the original 1995 feature film adaptation multiple times. A new big screen version seemed appropriate in this day and age with technology becoming more advanced and the franchise's mythology becoming more complex but honestly after watching this latest attempt I am left scratching my head as to how and why this was considered to be the best possible version they could have made. Story-wise it's pretty boring, its essentially a 'set-up' tale that stuck in first act mode throughout its entire runtime, it moves pretty fast and its a little hard to invest yourself to the characters because of it. The humor is really mean spirited and completely overdone, I like Kano as a character but often I found myself yelling "shut up!" at the screen. The action I have to say is not very impressive, a lot of it is pretty cut heavy and you do not really feel any sense of excitement or feel there is any danger for the heroic characters in this. Visually, it looks and feels a lot like a series from The CW, very few times really feel it warranted a big screen release on a cinematographic level. Honestly, that it was R rated is the one aspect they got right, everything else however...No.

The good: the story mostly works, the characterizations are insanely good (from costumes to personalities), and the movie is as gory and brutal as needed, actually way funnier than expected, and the CGI for the powers really great.

The bad: the story is a bit messy, the characters motivations and reactions not always 100% natural and/or coherent, and the action and fights (with the exception of the ones with Scorpion) are fine, but the choreography and/or filming is kind of weak (easy to improve with a bigger budget and more talent on board).

Plot was lacking but the violence, gore and fighting choreography made up for it. The editing was a bit choppy and lacked in arrears that needed more detail. With all that being said, it was overall enjoyable if you're an MK fan.

Great action and fight choreography as was to be expected from a movie with this title, special effects regarding characters and their abilities were also very well done especially considering the budget constraints this movie had. Storyline was predictable from the beginning and the writing itself isn't gonna win any awards, characters say their catchphrases from the games in key moments of the film, however, one big surprise for me was the character of Kano. He was the biggest and funniest comic relief character in the whole movie, constantly throwing jokes and insults at other characters. Probably one of the funniest, self aware movie characters I've seen in a long time.

There are also weird editing jumps in the movie, one moment you're looking at characters interacting and in the next you're looking at something completely different. The movie suffers from a few of these, but given this is the directors first foray into the world of movie making, I'll take that L, most of the other important things were handled with care,

If you know what you're getting and your expectations are right, this movie isn't gonna let you down with violence and gore, if you're expecting more then it's gonna be a letdown.