The cool violence won’t save ‘Mortal Kombat’
The new “Mortal Kombat” movie explodes with gruesome violence, making it a film fans of the video game would appreciate. But with overacting and ridiculous dialogue, it’s not that great of a movie. And the visual effects and epic action sequences don’t save it from being cheesy.
It starts off with an epic showdown between two key characters in the Mortal Kombat universe, Hanzo Hasashi and Bi-Han. Thinking he ended the Hasashi bloodline and the foretold prophecy, Bi-Han leaves, but he doesn’t know about the secret under the floor in the house.
Fast forward centuries and we meet Cole Young, an MMA fighter willing to earn money any way he can to support his family. He meets a beefy military man named Jax–who has the same birthmark as Cole.
After getting attacked by Sub-Zero, formally known as Bi-Han, Cole learns he has been chosen to fight in a tournament as a representative of the Earth realm. We meet two new characters, Sonya Blade, a skilled knife woman who was on the same military team as Jax, and Kano, an arrogant Aussie arms dealer and crime boss.
Journeying to a remote place to train for this tournament, they meet Liu Kang, who teaches them that all the chosen ones have a magic arcana that they could unlock to help them in the tournament. Cole’s arcana is the ability to control and bend fire.
The group’s training is interrupted by Shang Tsung, the master of the Outworld, and his minions, including Sub-Zero, who want to destroy the Earth realms champions before the tournament starts. The Earth realm would be overtaken by the darkness of the Outworld realm.
Betrayed by one of their champions, the group then fights together to defeat all of the minions of Shang Tsung. A long epically gruesome battle happens, including someone being cut in half and another person’s head exploding.
If violence and gore are not your things, then do not watch this movie, because it is living up to the brutality of the game. It’s all exaggerated as well so when someone gets stabbed they immediately start squirting blood.
The dialogue in this film is not the best. There were several moments where it wasn’t trying to be funny, but I couldn’t help but giggle to myself. As someone who doesn’t know the Mortal Kombat franchise and universe, it was hard for me to fully understand the history, and it felt like that because of the writing.
The acting was not great, but it’s enough for you to understand the good versus evil, which in the end is the overarching theme. None of them stood out in any way except Kano, because they gave him all the best lines.
I didn’t find myself rooting for Cole, despite his character being the driving force of the film’s point of view. It really felt like this was a movie that wanted to set up the next film, which hurt it in the end. It could have been a great new reboot to the Mortal Kombat franchise, but it fell short.
Despite having all the materials to translate into a fantastic movie, “Mortal Kombat” didn’t achieve its intended impact for moviegoers. It is playing at the nearest open theaters and is available to stream at home from HBO Max.
