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 ight years after its initial release, Paul Anderson's
"Mortal Kombat" proves to be a terribly weak movie that, although it's
aged well in terms of its visuals, its silly script, stilted acting, and
sometimes amateurish action sequences all count against it. Forget for one
moment that the movie's plot revolves around the stale Bad Action B-Movie
gimmick that is Tournament Fighting (previously explored in "Muscle
Heat"). As action movies go, "Mortal Kombat" still suffers
badly from having only one cast member who knows his way around a dojo.
Which isn't to say "Mortal Kombat" is a bad
movie. It's one of the more successful movies based on videogames, but obviously
that's not saying much. Besides being the first American work by Brit director
Paul Anderson ("Soldier"),
"Mortal Kombat" features such a silly storyline that it can only exist
in videogames to begin with. In a nutshell, forces of Outworld, existing in a
parallel dimension to Earth, challenges Earth's mightiest warriors every few
generation to do battle for the fate of Earth. Outworld wins,
they get Earth.
And so our heroes, led by Shoalin fighter Liu Kang (Robin
Shou), egotistical L.A. movie action star Johnny Cage (Linden Ashby), and
hardboiled cop Sonya Blade (Bridgette Wilson), goes to Outworld to do battle
with the forces of the evil Shang Tsung (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa). Aiding the
humans are mythical God Rayden (Christopher Lambert) and Outworld Princess
Kitana (Talisa Soto). The only-human trio fight, engage in badly written banter, fight some
more, and finally Robin Shou (who may have the worst haircut in cinematic
history for men) battles Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (who has really taken the whole
"evil face" thing too far). In the end, there's room for a sequel --
which appears 2 years later.
To be honest, "Mortal Kombat" is just not a very
good movie, even though I suspect that when I first saw it in theaters with loud
booming speakers it was something of a spectacle. Now, watching it again in
2003, one can't help but notice just how cheesy the move's screenplay is, or how
badly acted the whole thing is. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa ("Vampires")
is such a bad villain that he makes a James Bond villain look credible. And with
the exception of Robin Shou, I'm pretty sure not a single member of the speaking
cast had any martial arts training at the time of filming.
Action-wise, "Mortal Kombat" suffers from the
aforementioned lack of martial arts ability by most of its cast. As a result, we
are forced to watch Linden Ashby ("Sniper
2") and Bridgette Wilson ("House
on Haunted Hill") fake their way through a couple of badly
choreographed action sequences. I say "a couple" because
the vast majority of the action is shouldered by Robin Shou, a long-time Hong
Kong actor and the only one with an inkling of martial arts prowess. Next to
Shou, Wilson and Ashby look embarrassingly stiff, although
Ashby's stunt double did provide some nice footwork during the fight with
Scorpion.
Perhaps the saving grace of "Mortal Kombat" is
its big budget, which provides the movie with a number of terrific CGI
sequences. This includes scenes where Outworld warriors Scorpion and Sub Zero
showcase their powers. There's also a CGI Goro creature with 4 arms that is
nicely done. But even so, the film jumps too much between vastly different
locales until we're no longer sure just how big Shang Tsung's island is. Where
exactly did those woods come from again?
I don't want to give the impression that "Mortal
Kombat" is a worthless movie. Granted, it's not very bright, and the
screenplay screams for yet another re-write. But as another vapid
videogame-to-movie translation (see "Tomb
Raider"), "Kombat" succeeds well enough. The soundtrack is
terrific and Robin Shou's action sequences are pretty good. Besides that, Talisa
Soto ("Ballistic")
is gorgeous to look at. If you need more than these things to enjoy a movie,
then steer clear of "Mortal Kombat".
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