Mortal Kombat (2021) Review

 "Get over here!"

-Scorpion

Having won nine Mortal Kombat tournaments in a row, the realm of Outworld only needs to win one more to win the right to invade Earth.  Shang Tsung (Chin Han) plans to assassinate all of Earth's fighters before the tournament can even begin so Outworld can win by default.  The protector of Earth, Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano), must work quickly to gather the remaining fighters and train them before they can be killed.

What Works:

The original Mortal Kombat movie was rated PG-13, so there was almost no gore.  That's not acceptable in a movie adaptation of a notoriously violent video game series.  Luckily, they fixed that this time around.  There are some truly awesome and messy kills right out the gate and throughout the entire movie.  This is what I'm here to see!

The movie's fight sequences are all pretty epic and a lot of fun.  Sure, they're kinda dumb and definitely schlocky, but who cares?  I was all for it.  The movie opens with an epic fight centered around Scorpion (Hiroyuki Sanada), which was probably the best part of the movie.  And the final fight sequence gives it a run for its money.  We're here to watch awesome fights and bloody kills.  The movie at least gets that stuff right.

Finally, I want to praise the performance of Josh Lawson as Kano, who is easily the best character of the movie.  He is a delightful scumbag and the movie shines whenever he is on screen.  I was worried Kano might be killed off early, as he was in the original film, but we get plenty of screen time with him this time around.  All of the best lines of the movie come from him.

What Sucks:

The biggest problem of the movie comes from the characters.  Most of them are very underdeveloped.  Our main protagonist, Cole Young (Lewis Tan), is not super interesting and Liu Kang (Ludi Lin) would have been better served as the main character.  Apart from Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim), none of Shang Tsung's fighters receive any development or backstory, which is too bad because they all had a lot of potential.  

The biggest offender is Sonya Blade, mostly due to Jessica McNamee's performance.  She just isn't very good, especially during her exposition dialogue.  She had the potential to be incredibly interesting as she is the only fighter who doesn't have the Mortal Kombat marker.  With a more talented actress in the role, Sonya could have been really interesting.  Instead, she's thew weakest part of the film.

Finally, there are a few times where the editing gets too choppy during the fight sequences.  During the Goro (Angus Sampson) fight and the attack on Raiden's temple, the movie cuts back and forth way too rapidly.  It's almost nauseating at times.  Just focus on one sequence at a time and give your audience time to adjust to the shifting locations.

Verdict:

This reboot of Mortal Kombat is an improvement over the original in every way, except one.  Liu Kang was a much better protagonist than Cole Young.  Apart from that, the fight sequences and gore are much better and the movie is easier to figure out that the original, especially as someone who hasn't played much of the games.  A lot of the characters are underdeveloped, especially Sonya, and there is some choppy editing, but this is still an entertaining film and not bad as far as video game movies go.

 7/10: Good