Mortal Kombat

The video game arcades of the early 90's were heady places, a blend of lynx laced sweat, cigarette smoke, acne and cries of "FINISH HIM!" The last of course came from Mortal Kombat, the goriest game in town. Why play Streetfighter II with it's boring hadoukens and dragon punches when you could end a fight by ripping your opponent's spine out or punching them in the mush so hard their head exploded. You knew a fight was won when people gathered around the players to see a bloody fatality occur. Now almost 30 years later we get to experience that vicarious thrill all over again.

Mortal Kombat is being released in US cinemas and online today. In Ireland we'll only get to see it on the small screen for the time being due to covid and it's a pity because it's a film you'll get the most out of watching it with a raucous but appreciative crowd. The laughs and cheers when a heart gets ripped out or when someone gets bisected lengthwise would help hide this film's multitude of sins, sins that stand out glaringly on a TV. But, you know, just because a film is far from perfect, that doesn't mean it can't be fun. 

The Outworld is encroaching on the Earthrealm (I don't know either, just go with it) and the evil warlock Shang Tsung (Chin Han) has tasked his henchman Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim) with travelling to Earth to kill the Champions, the only people who can protect it. An MMA fighter named Cole Young (Lewis Tan) is his latest target because Cole is from the same bloodline as Hanzo Hasashi (Hiroyuki Sanada), a Japanese warrior taken down by Sub-Zero hundreds of years before (stay with me). Cole is rescued by a fellow champion called Jax Briggs (Mehcad Brooks) and directed towards his partner Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) and a mercenary called Kano (Josh Lawson). Together they travel to the Outworld where they will help Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano ), the protector of the Earthrealm, in his battle against Shang Tsung.

It's doesn't make a jot of sense. But look it, it's based on a computer game that's only popular for it's violence. It's a nostalgia fest and on that front it mostly delivers. Purists will moan that the story moves away from the arena based combat the games were based on (Paul W.S. Anderson's 1995 adaption was a lot more faithful in this aspect) but we came to see larger than life characters rip each other to shreds using the moves we all remember and we get it in spades. The earlier film, despite being based on a blood drenched game was saddled with a family friendly PG-13 rating but that doesn't apply here and first time director Simon McQuoid takes full advantage of the R rating (it's gotten a 16 cert here and deserves it) to pile on the crowd-pleasing blood and guts. Limbs snap, fly and shatter, intestines spill and faces splatter. The first 5 or 6 minutes will test your mettle and if you're able for them you'll fly the rest. If you came for the crunch you'll leave pleased. If you came expecting anything else though....

It really is a film for the fans only. If you don't know the lore you'll be lost and the film doesn't make it easy to keep up. In some places the plot is downright incomprehensible. Something happens. Someone appears? Why? Who knows. Oh look his face just got punched off LOL. And so on and so forth. The main characters are barely sketched outlines, others just appear to up the bodycount. To it's credit it's never boring but jesus there's nothing wrong with taking a breather to explain something every now and then. At times it feels like every bit of extraneous tissue has been snipped right out so we can get to the next impaling. Now I know if you're reading this you probably enjoy a good impaling but give us a smidge of something else.

As already mentioned, if you're a fan you'll ignore it's bad points and concentrate on the fun. It's all gamely carried out by a cast who look convincingly mincing femurs and disembowelling their enemies. It's always welcome to see a racially diverse cast like this in a big budget film too and thankfully it's avoided the whitewashing that affected the old adaptions. This and the Fast & Furious films aside it's way too rare an occurrence in American cinema.

Mortal Kombat is streaming online now if you use a VPN. It may get a cinema release later in the year if Covid-19 numbers continue to drop. It will be the best way to experience it.