Brief Story Line
A professional MMA fighter named Cole Young (Lewis Tan - Wu Assassins TV series etc) found himself caught in the middle of the war between Earthrealm and the Outworld led by its leader Shang Tsung (Chin Han - Skyscraper etc) who wanted to rule both worlds. Shang Tsung assigned his ruthless assassin Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim - The Swordsman, The Night Comes for Us etc) to kill Cole who seemed to have important role in the latest tournament to the death between the two worlds, called Mortal Kombat.
After saved by Jax (Mehcad Brooks - Supergirl TV series etc), Cole was determined to train himself and fight for Earthrealm. Together with other warriors such as Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee - The Meg etc), Liu Kang (Ludi Lin - Power Rangers etc) and Kung Lao (Max Huang), they all trained under the guidance of Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano - 47 Ronin etc).
Meanwhile a criminal named Kano (Josh Lawson - House of Lies TV series etc) was somehow involved in the fight as well. So what would happen to Cole and what was his role in the Mortal Kombat? Find them all in this entertaining action movie based on popular video game.
End of Brief Story Line
Well that was some bloody entertainment, and I meant it in a literal way as in a lot of blood from the killings. The opening scenes were already brilliant with some truly well done fight choreography. To me this movie's real star was actually Joe Taslim, and I am not biased because he is Indonesian, but it was due to his excellent fight skills. And it so happened that my wife is a fan of Sub-zero character (she frequently used him as her main playing character in Mortal Kombat games), although she was not satisfied with the ending related to him.
Throughout the movie, I felt the story was not as good as I had hoped for. Nevertheless, it was something that I could still tolerate. Plus the movie was quite fun due to the appearance of Kano with his comical behavior. I think Josh Lawson was the one who provide brightness with his humor. The rest of the actors and actresses were adequate in here. In any case, I would not expect this to be an award worthy movie with awesome acting.
As I said above, the fight scenes were what made this movie interesting. And the Visual effects were pretty good as well. Of all the fights here, I loved the finale fight the most. However, the one on one fights prior to the climax were well done too. My wife also told me there were some signature moves shown here, with the classic words like "Finish Him!". Btw, I kept on mentioning my wife cause regretfully I did not play this game too much during my teenage years, unlike her who played with her brother. So you can imagine her being more ecstatic during certain scenes.
Aside from the playable characters I wrote in the Brief Story Line, there were several others who fans of the game would have recognized. One that caught my attention was Hanzo Hasashi (Hiroyuki Sanada -Life etc). His fight scenes were quite memorable. Although there was one major character who did not appear in here, but there is possibility we can see him if a sequel is made. There were also specially created character for the movie, i.e. the lead character himself Cole Young and his daughter Emily (Matilda Kimber) & wife Allison (Lauren Brent).
Overall I thought this film was a good enough adaptation of the famous game. It has quite a lot violence, the attribute that made the game a success and significant amount of fight scenes, with some quite memorable due to its gore nature. So if you are a fan of this game/video game, then definitely give it a try, especially with R rating and gore/explicit kill scenes which was an improvement compared to the 1995 version. Although if the story was made a bit better, I would have probably enjoyed it more.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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