‘Mortal Kombat’ Review: Far From Flawless Victory
Mortal Kombat is a mixed bag on every level. As such, its appeal to every person who sees it will be of equally mixed satchel-ness.
Let’s start with the most important thing – how is the kombat… uh, combat? The fight scenes are a combination of brilliant choreography, amazing visual effects, somewhat questionable camera work, and horrible editing. Those who have watched the first seven minutes will notice this in the opening one-on-one fight scene between pre-Sub Zero and pre-Scorpion – the editing is choppy and movements are broken down into multiple little cuts that keep switching the camera angles. Additionally, the camera will sometimes be in the right spot, but more often than not there will be some dumb thing in the way as the camera swings around. This issue continues through the whole movie – awesome (at least, conceptually awesome) choreography and visual effects masked by odd-at-best camera placement and hyper-excited editing. The worst part is that it tends to obscure a lot of the character’s signature moves.
With that said, there are some incredibly amazing shots on display. The characters all get a chance to display some of their in-game move list, with fan favorites getting much more screen time to show it. Liu Kang, for example, runs through his roster of moves, Scorpion gets to have fun with not just the Kunai but also a katana, Kung Lao has fun with his hat (and even gets a Fatality), and Sub Zero shows his entire repertoire of moves with added grace from Joe Taslim.
The movie is also a solid hard-R rating due to violence, though even then it is a bit of a question mark. For example, they have moments where the gore is cranked up suitably to reflect the game – a man’s arms are frozen and torn off, a person’s face gets smashed by two fists, hearts are ripped and broken, people are almost sawed in half – all good fun. Yet there are other moments that you think would be in there – being severed in half at the torso, for example, or getting your spine pulled out – that don’t seem to make the cut and were edited to make sure the film maintained a hard-R rating. The like was very strange, but the graphic, mostly cartoony levels of violence, when there, were shown in all the glorious detail with perfect camera angles and lingered long enough to enjoy.
And there is a lot to enjoy with the violence. Especially character-specific violence.
Speaking of characters – how do they fare? Well, if you’re a Mortal Kombat fan, then be ready for another new challenger – the main character Cole… something. In a misguided attempt to cater to new audiences, the movie has created a stock main audience surrogate who is a pathetic loser that always gives up. He also gets to fulfill the prophesy baby cliché by being the only character born with the special something – in this case a mark that can unlock your superpowers (the movie needs to give people a reason for being able to shoot fire, fly, kick a thousand times, or rebuild metal arms from scratch). He even has a family since… you know, he’s a cliched main character that they couldn’t figure out a good backstory for.
The actor does a fine job with what he’s given, which isn’t very much. However, his blandness stands in stark contrast to the other characters, most of which are distilled down to their visual identity and one or two personality quirks. None of the actors are bad, but the range is all over the place. Tadanobu Asano is great in his few moments as Raiden, being able to take the ridiculous notions of the movie and play them both dramatically and comedically with good timing. Chin Han does the best with what he’s given as The Main Badguy (who also is pretty good at calculations) – at the very least he convinced me that he was Big Baddie worthy. Joe Taslim and Hiroyuki Sanada are both awesome as Sub Zero and Scorpion, respectively. The rest of the cast is fair enough and does a good job… it’s just a shame that there aren’t more characters.
The production design for the movie is also pretty good for the most part, though the design of the characters is all over the place. For example, most of the mainstays look pretty good. The earth characters look suitably grounded, the outer…world(?) characters have elaborate enough costumes, and they all reflect an updated and upgraded version of the movie look… except for the main character, who just kinda always stays looking bland. The movie also has a bunch of locations that pay homage to the game, with the more outlandish the scene the better looking it is. What amounts to the ending fight arena is hauntingly beautiful, though a lot of other areas just feel bland.
The mixed-bad debacle seeps its way into the story as well. The movie can’t quite settle on a suitable tone – does it take itself seriously like the opening few minutes, does it discard and truncate the plot like huge moments in the middle, does it play up the camp factor like when characters perform over-the-top killing moves and then say then ending lines like “Flawless Victory” and “Fatality” (also, where was the Babalities and Friendship Finishes)? There were moments when I felt like the movie knew what kind of movie it should be – establish quick character motivations, abbreviate the plot, keep up with the action – but then they have some moments that linger (the family stuff, for example, or the rivalry between Sub Zero and Scorpion).
As a special mention, the moment the heroes come together and figure out a plan looks like they just filmed it on a greenscreen quickly (maybe a pickup shot?) so that they could truncate the moment to the bare minimum.
And look, I’m not hoping for much story for a movie based on a game with a backlog of lore the size of the Encyclopedia Brittanica – I just want there to be enough threads connecting the action scenes together (as long as the action scenes are good): see The Raid: Redemption. Yet there is something off about this story, like they could have almost had something decent but it was missing something.
I think the place this works the least is in the ending. The movie feels like it is building to a big, climactic showdown where the heroes get together to do the fighting, and this happens in some regards as each character gets their one-on-one fight scenes. It feels like this is culminating into something big, but the thing it culminates to is an amazing spectacle of a scene but ultimately feels unsatisfying. For one, the person that has been building to be the main character feels tangentially involved in the emotional stakes of the fight scene, to the point he doesn’t actually end the fight. Secondly, the fight scene feels like it is against the main henchman of the movie instead of the actual final boss. Third, the final moments of the movie lack any real sense of solid closure – no voice-over wrap up, no exciting “Things we learned along the way” moment… just a flat can of sequel-baiting-cola. In some ways, it feels like it undermines the rest of the film due to it being just a big lead-up to some other moment.
In fact, the whole movie feels that way – building a foundation to something that can be enjoyable and just fumbling it poorly at the end, not enough spectacle, pathos, camp, good filmmaking, reverence, or winking.
Rating: It’s fine.
Post-Script: If you want to see Joe Taslim in something that feels similar to this but is much better, watch The Night Comes for Us, now playing on Netflix.
