Film Review - Mortal Kombat (2021)

 Mortal Kombat is based off of the successful video game and stars Lewis Tan as Cole Young, a washed up MMA fighter who is being hunted by a figure known as Bi-Han/Sub Zero (Joe Taslim) which brings him to the attention of Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) who has been researching an ancient tournament known as Mortal Kombat and If Earthrealm loses then the forces of Outworld will invade and enslave them all.

 

I was very keen for this new Mortal Kombat movie as I was a longtime fan of the video games going back to the first 2 on PC and the third on Game Boy and Sega Mega Drive in the 1990s and later on the 2011 reboot game on Playstation 3 and the preview for this new film looked very promising so I was all keen for this to be a great time at the movies and a great Martial Arts film which I have been looking for.

 

But sadly this movie only partially delivers on that promise, don’t get me wrong the opening of the film is amazing and it sets the mood beautifully, Josh Lawson is terrific as Kano and the audience I saw the film with in the cinema laughed a lot with his lines, the violence and action is pretty good even if at times there is way too much quick cutting and digital blood.

 

But where this movie really falters and it hurts the film in a big way is the addition of Cole Young who is a new character created for this movie and it is a very old fashioned character and by that I mean he comes from a line of thinking where people get nervous that a film like this won’t reach a big audience so they come up with an outsider character who can represent that broad audience and have everything explained to them and every single time he comes on screen it drags the film down and his storyline drags the film down and this had such an easy structure to it.

 

Act 1: Have Sonya explain MK through her research and tracking down the fighters

 

Act 2: Training

 

Act 3: Tournament

 

Following that structure was such an easy way to go but instead it becomes muddled with this family storyline of an outsider character that in the end adds very little to the film and takes away from the film as a whole and it feels very disappointing as a result.

 

In the end Mortal Kombat is a fun watch on the big screen with a crowd but its storytelling needed to be better refined and to have faith in the established roster of characters to carry it, 2 and a half out of 5.