MORTAL KOMBAT
A film review by Thomas Wheeler
Copyright 1995 Thomas Wheeler
Presented by New Line Studios and starring Christopher Lambert
Video-game based movies have never done especially well. Nobody wants to talk about SUPER MARIO BROTHERS anymore, and while STREET FIGHTER wasn't bad, most aficionados of the video game weren't especially impressed. I've always felt the reason that such movies fared poorly was the lack of background information on which to build a successful movie. In STREET FIGHTER there were some interesting characters, and there *is* a fair background to them in their Japanese incarnation, but really, for a full-length movie, what could you *do* with them? There was also a complaint about a lack of *fights*, which is what the game was all about.
All of that is easily taken care of in MORTAL KOMBAT. This isn't a movie for everybody, and it surely lives up to its PG-13 rating. Don't think that this is a kids' movie. Older kids, yeah, but there are some truly horrifying scenes, such as the destruction of Scorpion, that are not appropriate for small children.
You want fights? This movie is a cross between a roller coaster ride and a swift kick in the head. It is absolute, unmitigated, almost non-stop slam-bang action that *still* manages to tell an interesting story, which, for a change, ties in *very* closely with its root concept, in this case the video game. Too often, I feel, some producer, director, or studio takes a concept from some other source; book, comic book, cartoon, or whatever, and feels the need to twist it around and put their own mark on it. This is *not* the case with MORTAL KOMBAT. If you like the game, you'll *love* the movie.
The actor who plays Liu Kang (his name escapes me) is a well known martial arts actor in various Oriental countries. Martial arts movies haven't been too popular in America for a couple of decades now. We've gotten used to the types of action scenes that generall involve either fisticuffs or large heavy equipment. These fights are truly choreographed, and the effort put into them shows.
Then there's the eight-foot tall, four-armed Goro. This is no Muppet, folks. He's one very large, very nasty piece of audio-animatronics equipment. The special effects, mostly computer generated, are truly spectacular. There's even a bit of humor here and there, mostly from Christopher Lambert, who plays Rayden and seems to enjoy playing the least physical role in the movie while everybody else gets the stuffing kicked out of them at one point or another.
I went to the first showing, and the theater was *packed*! This on a hot Arizona day with school having just started. Like I said, this isn't a movie for everyone. But if you like action movies, and have even the slightest knowledge of Mortal Kombat, go see this film. You *will* have a good time. I'm going again just so I can pick up on what I missed the first time around.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews