Film Review: Mortal Kombat

Mortal Kombat is a very silly movie based on a very silly video game series. That, I suppose, makes it one of the more faithful and effective video game adaptations to date. I should make it clear before I get into it that I don’t have much of a connection to the game series, and I have only seen the 1995 Paul W.S. Anderson film once when I was a child. I think it’s safe to say this franchise has left very little mark on me, so I can only take this new film from director, Simon McQuoid, writers, Greg Russo and Dave Callaham, and producer, James Wan, at face value.

The film follows Cole Young (Lewis Tan), a washed up MMA fighter who finds out he is special due to his dragon birthmark, and is taken in by Jax (Mehcad Brooks) and Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) to train with Earth’s greatest fighting champions at Lord Raiden’s (Tadanobu Asano) temple as they prepare for a tournament against villains from the Outworld, led by Shang Tsung (Chin Han) and his best fighter, Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim), in which the fate of the world itself is at stake, but our heroes will only have a chance to win once Cole is able to tap into his powers.

If all that sounds kinda ridiculous to you, you’re not wrong. In fact, the film acknowledges this early on when Sonya brings Cole into one of those rooms that are covered in newspaper clippings, and she has this whole exposition dump about the Mortal Kombat tournament, and Cole responds in a joking manner, even pointing out that the “Kombat” is spelled wrong. However, the film is smart to keep the “winking at the audience” gags to a minimum as a way to keep the stakes real and the characters grounded in the situation.

But hey, characters and lore fine and all, but what about the fights? After all, it’s the main appeal of the film. The action is good for the most part, even if it sometimes has the habit of adding in arbitrary cuts to other angles messed with the overall flow. But I like that they were able to include some clever beats into the choreography, I like how each fighter has their own style, and the gleeful gruesomeness is a blast to watch. Though, I will say, having been spoiled by gorey onslaught of The Night Comes For Us (also starring Joe Taslim), the fatalities in here are only over-the-top by the standards of a western action film. They are still fun to watch, and it’s all complemented by the colors, costumes, and sets. I also need to give a special shout out to the folks who worked on the effect, which seemed too combine VFX with practical on camera stuff, and it looks wonderful.

As someone who isn’t too familiar with the game, I did find myself thinking on too many times about the mechanics of this world, and wondering how it all works. There is a level of familiarity that I think the film assumes of its audience, which is fair enough considering the series has been a mainstay in the video game world for almost three decades. But as an outsider to the source material, many of these characters aren’t particularly interesting, and they are only at their best when they allow big personalities to shine, like the Australian mercenary Kano (Josh Lawson), or my personal favorite from this film, one of the baddies named Kabal (performed on set by Daniel Nelson and voiced by Damon Herriman). Everyone else is generically stoic to varying degrees.

Obviously, one shouldn’t expect too much from Mortal Kombat. It’s a film clearly designed to be enjoyed by folks who have played the games over the years, finally getting a chance to see these characters get the big screen treatment in a way that delivers the hard-R action that it calls for. Prior to this, Simon McQuoid made a name for himself directing commercials, and those instincts both help and hinder the film. It contributes to the film moving at a fast clip, packing as much information as it can in short bursts in between the fight sequences, but it also leads to a film that feels like it will end up having most of its best scenes enjoyed on YouTube without any context. There isn’t much meat on here, and it makes the mistake of promising better things to come. And as far as I know a sequel has not been green-lit yet. Though, it does start and end strong, mostly because it hones in on the one conflict that I was actually able to connect with – between Hanzo Hasashi (Hiroyuki Sanada) and Sub-Zero. There is plenty of fan service to be found, complete with a remix of the iconic theme from the 1995 film, “Techno Syndrome” by The Immortals, playing over the credits. The fan service is fairly well done, and never took me out of the moment. This might seem harsh, but I did ultimately enjoy the film, and if a sequel were to be made, I do hope that they can take all the best elements from this film, and go from there. In the meantime, I think I would much rather revisit The Night Comes For Us for the hundredth time.

Mortal Kombat is now out in theaters and on HBO Max for 31 days.