Mortal Kombat Reviews

If the realm of Outworld wins Mortal Kombat ten consecutive times, Emperor Shao Kahn will be able allowed by the Elder Gods to conquer Earth. Shang Tsung (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) is a sorcerer working for Shao Kahn who has already won nine times. Raiden (Christopher Lambert) is the god of thunder and protector of Earthrealm. Liu Kang (Robin Shou) enters the tournament to avenge his brother who was killed by Shang Tsung. Johnny Cage (Linden Ashby) is the brash Hollywood star out to prove his skills. Sonya Blade (Bridgette Wilson) is American special force chasing after criminal Kano onto the boat. Princess Kitana (Talisa Soto) helps the Earth fighters to keep it from sharing the same fate as her world.

The writing is not going to win any awards. The acting is competent. Cary-Hiroyuki is having fun. It is the best of video game adaptation. Most of all, it is an enjoyable adventure. The Liu Kang fights are great. It's terrific to see the video game characters come to life and that song is the best.

When I was a kid, the first Mortal Kombat was huge when I came out in arcade. Like all the over kids, I thought it was awesome and it is rather surprising that it took me almost 20 years to see the movie version. When it was released, the video games adaptations were really new and after the abysmal failures of the Super Marios Bros and Street Fighter movies, some wonder if this genre will even make any money. Eventually, this flick was a box-office hit, pretty much single-handheldly launched the genre and it is pretty much one of the reasons why we get nowadays all those dreadful adaptations. Anyway, how was the damned thing after all? To be fair enough, it was quite faithful to the game which was the huge mistake they made with the Street Fighter adaptation but it was still not really good, I'm afraid. I mean, the whole thing looked terribly cheesy, the acting was laughable (Christopher Lambert was once again pretty embarrassing) and even the fights were not convincing. Eventually, 7 years later, Paul W.S. Anderson would direct another even better video game adaptation called 'Resident Evil' and, to this day, there is still making some sequels more awful than the one that came before. To conclude, even though there were many things to enjoy in this adaptation, it was still pretty weak and I don't think it is really worth a look, even if you like the genre.

Most of the movies I saw in my childhood were action movies. I remember the days when I used to fast-forward the films on my VCR(!) to the action sequences. Once the scene would appear, I would record it with my father's mobile and then enjoy it later to my heart's content. The Matrix, Terminator, Die Hard, Street Fighter, Kung Fu Hustle, you name it. You know the trailers they used to show just before a presentation, with a deep baritone voice narrating? That's how I was introduced to this film, by that voice... and the music in the background.

Anyway, when I was young of course the film was awesome, but now that I've grown up, and matured along the way, I found out that the film starts off quite smartly but descends into the same old, same old - mindless action, funny dialogue (although Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa's line delivery of "I can see into your soul. You will die" was awesome), and a totally unconvincing setup. For most of the film I was reminded of old dungeon-crawler games, especially Dungeons & Dragons and of a dark, demented version of Pac-Man. This film has very few redeeming features, and they mostly come from the actors. The cast was quite well chosen, and even though they're nothing extraordinary - some even fall in the pit of self parody - at-least we can say with some dignity that they were not like the cast in Street Fighter, who were totally laughable. Kylie Minogue and JCVD? You gotta be kidding!

Story-wise, the film is weak. Very thinly scripted, but entertaining all the same. Most of the cast, however, were not as weak. Robin Shou was convincing and at ease in his role as Liu Kang, the main protagonist. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa was - I'm in the minority here - awesome in his role as Shang Tsung, the main antagonist. It's funny that his one-expression face hasn't garnered any memes yet. And the population is usually so quick on this. Anyway, an entertaining performance. The number of emotions / expressions Bridgette Wilson managed to cram in was quite an achievement. Rather than acting like an eye-candy robot, she functioned as a barely active eye-candy robot. But despite all this, her fight scene with Kano seemed authentic, with all the punches and the kicks and the whatnot's. But still, a robot. Linden Ashby is instantly forgettable in his role as Johnny Cage. A performance that is further marred by the hilarious, not-at-all-fitting dialogues / quotes. Christopher Lambert bought a quiet dignity to his comic-relief character Rayden, but it just wasn't "enough"! But he did subtly break boring moments with his detached comedy. Talisa Soto was attractive in her role, yes, but barely memorable or even worthy of mentioning.

In conclusion, despite the setbacks, Mortal Kombat is actually one of the best - OK, good - game-to-movie adaptations ever made. There has virtually been no good game-to-film adaptations (so far) but MK and Silent Hill come close. Well, at least they are better than House of the Dead and Street Fighter.

7.0/10