Mortal Kombat: Test Your Might!

The plot is simple and a bit clichéd, but what do you expect from a movie based on a 1992 video game.  A group of chosen warriors must battle assassins from the Outworld Realm.  Earthrealm has lost 9 consecutive deathmatches called Mortal Kombat if they lose the 10^th, Earthrealm will fall to the evil of Outworld.  Simple and cliched, but also fun as hell.  This is the third live action movie based on the game and serves as a reboot to the franchise.

This movie tries to flesh out the character’s back stories and motivations.  This includes Cole Young (Lewis Tan), a washed-up MMA champion who is a direct descendant of Hanzo Hasashi (Hiroyuki Sanada), a great ninja and champion.  He is tracked down by Sonya (Jessica McNamee) and Jax (Mehcad Brooks), ex-military Special Forces who have discovered the history of the Mortal Kombat competition.  They are joined by Kano (Josh Lawson), Liu Kang (Ludi Lin) and Kung Lao (Max Huang) as the Earthrealm’s champions, fighting for Raiden (Tadanobu Asano), the god of thunder.  They are untrained and no match for the Outworld’s champions led by Bi-Han, aka Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim) fighting for Shang Tsung (Chin Han).  The champions must learn to awaken their arcana, their special powers that will allow them to fight and defeat the Otherworld assassins.  The story is really about the characters discovering what their inner power is.

The movie is rated “R” for swearing, blood, violence, death and gore and there is quite a bit of it all.   The film clips along at a good pace with a lot of action.  The fight scenes are well filmed, choreographed, exciting and fun, and that is what we are really watching this movie for.  The performances are what you would expect from this type of movie, flat and a bit corny.  No one will be winning the best acting Oscar for this film, but no one was really a “bad” actor.    Lewis Tan as Cole is a little flat, but not terrible and is likeable and good enough to carry the franchise.  Josh Lawson’s Kano is boisterous and annoying, but he is meant to be, and he does it quite well.  Ludi Lin plays Liu Kang with ease and a great likeability.  Jessica and Mehcad also play their respective roles quite well.  We care for Jax and Sonya and cheer when they win their battles.  The good guys are likeable and we actually care for them.  Besides Joe Taslim’s Subj-Zero, we don’t really get to know any of the bad guys, just enough to cheer for their defeat.

The production value is high, although some of the special effects do stand out as computer generated.  The storyline flows quite well, but the script is corny and stumbles a little.  The music is affective, with some hints towards the kick-ass theme song from the game, I wish they would have used it a bit more.  Overall, the film is what it is meant to be, a fun, action, adventure movie base on a 90s game.  I really enjoyed it.  It didn’t make me laugh, cry or change my life, but it did make for an enjoyable evening of superpowered death matches.