It looked pretty good, didn’t it? The Mortal Kombat movie made all the right noises ahead of release. Ultra gore – check! Fatalities from the games – check! Loads of characters from the convoluted Mortal Kombat universe – check! Unfortunately the finished article – out today to rent in the UK priced £15.99 – fails to live up to the hype.
Mortal Kombat starts strong, with a fantastic fight starring Joe Taslim’s Bi-Han – a ninja who goes on to become the frosty Sub-Zero – and Hiroyuki Sanada’s Hanzo Hasashi – a ninja who goes on to become the fiery Scorpion. There’s wonderful fight choreography to be seen as Hasashi flings a kunai attached to a rope (a cool origin story for one of the most iconic video game weapons of all time) through the heads of Bi-Han’s goons. It’s a fast, fresh action scene, and you can watch it in the video below:
Mortal Kombat | Opening Seven Minutes | Max Watch on YouTube
And Mortal Kombat finishes strong, too, with a decent fight to bring the conflict to an end (for now – a sequel seems certain). But everything in between the top and tail of Mortal Kombat’s gory innards is a badly-paced snore-fest.
The main issue, I think, is the filmmakers’ decision to create a brand new character as the central protagonist. Cole Young, played by Lewis Tan, is a washed up MMA fighter who finds himself thrust into the b-movie world(s) of Mortal Kombat. Clearly, the idea was to provide the audience with a character they could relate to, a character they could hold hands with as soul-sucking sorcerers, four-armed monsters and thunder gods flash on-screen. The problem is, poor Cole is so mind-numbingly boring, it’s almost impossible to care about his fate.