REVIEW: 'Mortal Kombat': Definitely not a Flawless Victory
Hiroyuki Sanada as Scorpion in Mortal Kombat, directed by Simon McQuoid.
In general terms, the new Mortal Kombat is just fine – but it’s also just one on a long, long list of films in which the intelligence of movie-goers is collectively given the middle finger by studios who think they know better.
Based on the best-selling video game, the newest film adaptation follows the plight of Cole Young (Lewis Tan), a washed-up, has-been MMA fighter (he’s missing a Nick Nolte-like mentor on a redemption arc) who is down on his luck (to make sure he starts from the very bottom). He has a convenient birthmark that signifies his importance (he’s not) to the movie’s central premise. The film follows the same plot beats as the game; the existence of Earthrealm (basically, Earth) is threatened by the Outworld (a land where all beasts and monsters are evil), and a team of human fighters are tabbed to participate in the titular do-or-die fighting tournament, where another loss would leave Earthrealm vulnerable to an invasion. There are minor quibbles about why the combatants are fighting each other now, and the plot of the video game never made much sense anyway, but the big irony in the movie is that the tournament never actually happens. Anyway, I digress.
Fans of the video game will already raise their eyebrows at Cole Young, and despite being an “original” character for the film, Clueless Cole is about as interesting as any protagonist from a young adult novel. He’s a good-natured, ordained hero figure who has absolutely zero weaknesses other than being completely useless at the beginning of the film because the story demands it. He gets beat up pretty badly as we’re introduced to his character in a cage fight, but he’s a good guy because his opponent (condescendingly?) taps him on the shoulder for being such a good meat bag. While said meat bag grabs some post-fight burgers with his wife and daughter, they are ambushed by Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim), an Outworld fighter with the ability to create and manipulate ice, before they are saved by a former Special Forces agent Jax Briggs (Mehcad Brooks) and his partner Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee).
Cole Young (Lewis Tan) a new character for the franchise.
The plot is quickly fleshed out through exposition during a short trek across an unknown desert, but at least some fun begins when the fan favourites pop up, including Raiden (Tadanobu Asano, who doesn’t get to do a whole lot), Liu Kang (Ludi Lin) and the villainous Shang Tsung (Chin Han, who also doesn’t get to do a whole lot). We spend an inordinate amount of time watching all of them train with varying degrees of interest, from fascination with Liu Kang’s ability to produce fireballs to Kano’s (Josh Lawson) endless cussing that would put The Wolf of Wall Street to shame. There’s quite a few easter egg moments (“Flawless Victory!!!”) for long-time fans of the franchise, but beyond that it’s a series of very generic action set pieces with a very generic character at the center of it. Huge points off for Clueless Cole – no offense to Tan – but it would’ve still made perfect sense if Liu Kang was the central character who goes on a path of discovery (as he did in the original film), or if it was even Sonya Blade, who is the only character not to be tabbed as one of Earthrealm’s original warriors.
Where Mortal Kombat does succeed is in the first seven minutes and the final fight, both of which feature two of the most iconic characters in the franchise: a showdown between Sub-Zero and Scorpion (Hiroyuki Sanada), characters who are given proper due with their backstories. Unsurprisingly, they are effective because they throw a lot of plot out the window and allow two fighters to just simply go at it with multiple weapons and blood spraying everywhere. At the end of the day, that’s what Mortal Kombat is about. There’s emotional weight to the action and the characters (Taslim and Sanada were both good, despite having their faces covered for half the film) and it gave you a sense of hope (which ended up being false) that this was going to be a video-game movie that was self-aware and had a chance to be good. I think it’s pretty telling that the prologue and the final fight have almost nothing to do with the conflict between Earthrealm and the Outworld. Even Clueless Cole’s connection to Scorpion is nothing but a footnote, and at no point do they really share any similarities other than being of Asian descent.
Chin Han as Shang Tsung the sorcerer.
Somewhere in there is a movie that could’ve been half-decent, and it starts by axing Clueless Cole and doubling down on the historic rivalry between Sub-Zero’s Lin Kuei clan and Scorpion’s Shirai Ryu clan. That was the major conflict audiences probably cared about the most, with the threat of the tournament set in the background and upon which the rivalry could ultimately be settled.
It’s one of those (many) films where things just happen because they need to, and there’s just not a lot of thought about what ties everything together. The movie makes a passing reference to “arcana” – basically the film’s version of “superpower” – but how it’s actually achieved and how it’s manifested is barely comprehensible. Characters accomplish things and gain powers through ways that are inconsistent from scene to scene, and it just doesn’t ever feels like Mortal Kombat really understands what it’s trying to accomplish.
Mortal Kombat gets two stars out of four.
