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MOVIE REVIEW: FTN reviews Mortal Kombat

April 24th, 2021 by Marc Comments

Mortal Kombat (R)
Directed by: Simon McQuoid
Starring: Lewis Tan, Jessica McNamee & Josh Lawson
Run time: 1hr 50min

MMA fighter Cole Young seeks out Earth’s greatest champions in order to stand against the enemies of Outworld in a high stakes battle for the universe.

Based on the hit video game series, Mortal Kombat is finally back on the big (and small) screen after the 1995 fun but silly movie and its ‘so awful it’s actually good’ sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation and it’s a pretty successful effort. Mostly.

Opening with a cracking sequence (below) setting up the story of two of the franchise’s best character, Scorpion and Sub-zero, the movie soon settles down by introducing us to new character – no, we’re not sure why, in a franchise with literally hundreds of characters, a brand new character was introduced either – Cole Young, a keen but failing MMA fighter who is part of an ancient legacy and has a very important job… to help save the world and our reality from the evil forces of the Outworld.

The rest of the movie then becomes a dash for Cole and his new friends Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) and Jax (Mecad Brooks) to assemble the Avengers, sorry, earth’s defenders who also share the same destiny while on the run from Joe Haslin’s terrifying Subzero who has been tasked with wiping out all the potential fighters from earth.

Along the way they meet Kano, played by Australian comedian Josh Lawson, who pretty much steals the whole movie with the funniest lines and best character throughout the story.

Can I just say here that Brooks, who played the so bland it was painful Jimmy Olsen in Supergirl, is utterly superb here, and is a tank of a man who couldn’t be further removed than his Olsen turn… and it’s all the better for it!

The movie itself, while fun, is surprisingly uneventful, with all the action and gore – and there’s one scene in particular that will leave a few jaws on the floor – not happening until the last act, with very little of note on the action front happening between the opening and the final act.

Which would be ok if not for the movie’s utterly amazing ability to bounce from terrible to great and back again – honestly, I had whiplash moving between the levels of quality in this movie. When it’s bad, it’s really, really bad but when it’s good, you’ll be stuck to the screen.

Now, as a novice to the Mortal Kombat universe outside of the original movie, I loved the mythology in here and really hope that when we get the planned sequels, we see that explored a lot more.

As of the fight scenes, they tend to be brief but well realised and, as I said above, there’s a couple of fatalities that live up to the game’s blood-soaked legacy.

And on that note, I must say a few other things that really impressed me. For a movie that was made for a rumoured $20m, the costumes and effect work here is fantastic (well, aside from some poor greenscreen work when we’re in the Outworld) and the characters’ special powers, from conjuring fire to freezing everything around, are so well handled, it’s a, yes, flawless victory for the effects team.

And it’s funny – there’s a nod from Kano in one scene to how many players just find a move that works for them and constantly use it to win that’s clever and very funny. The inclusion of phrases from the game is very clever too.

I also love that, while the movie is very self-aware, it’s all done with a knowing but very straight face. I admire that and it works very well.

One of the big problems with the movie is the Cole character though. No fault of star Tan, the character is an uninteresting addition to the franchise’s roster and even his ability is a bit ‘meh’ with characters like Jax, Blade and Liu Kang all having more interesting backstories and could easily have been the audience’s way into the story… it’s a baffling addition.

There’s a lot of poor performances throughout and some of the dialogue so B-movie you’ll hope it’s deliberate… I’m not entirely sure it all is.

But, for all its faults – and there’s plenty –  the movie is, overall, a lot of fun with a world of characters still out there to be explored and, with the tease set up at the end, it seems like the next chapter could be a big one.

Just, next time, can we actually have a tournament?

Very flawed, yes, but damned if I’m not excited to see where it goes next.

3 out of 5 Nerds

Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….