Mortal Kombat (1995) – Review

The booming synth techno music lets you know immediately you have reached the correct destination. A young kung fu artist dressed in red flails around and begs a master dressed in black for his life. Nope. His actual soul is lost to this darkly clad man, Shang Tsung (Tagawa). Liu Kang (Shou) awakens from this awful nightmare of his younger brother’s death. He looks at a telegraph reminding him of this stark reality.

Mercenaries Sonya Blade (Wilson-Sampras) and Jaxx raid a nightclub while utilizing shit dialogue. Sonya is looking for a criminal Kano (Goddard), who killed her partner and also happens to have a meeting with Shang Tsung. The mysterious Tsung is looking to get all of these parties at a tournament. What tournament?! Reference the opening music techno theme song for a main clue.

Over in Hollywood, Johnny Cage (Ashby) dances with a bunch of goons. Too bad it’s just a movie set. But hey, maybe there’s some tournament where Johnny can again prove he is actually one of the best martial artists on the planet. If only…

Whoa! Wait a minute, so, what is this tournament that keeps popping up and why do we care? Well, of course as the fighters of Earthrealm come together it turns out that Mortal Kombat is a contest which decides the whole fate of the world. Much responsibility!

As the sparky Lord Raiden (Lambert) enters the scene, will the warriors of Earth have enough on their side to repel the evil sorcerer Shang Tsung and his dark forces, or will the planet fall to villains like Scorpion, Sub-Zero and Goro?

Mortal Kombat cannot be ruled a film of high art, but it has its charms for those enamored by 90s nostalgia. It def was not a critical or even fan winner by any major metric, but I can’t help but enjoy plenty of it. It’s got stiff dialogue at times and plenty of humor which does not land, yet it’s not all awful script wise. The setup goes fairly smoothly even if the exposition is a bit heavy handed, but, I mean, look at the source material. Story wise there is just much to work with, and that was definitely the case when this was written in the early 90s.

The casting has a few bright spots, and some of the film’s better qualities do cover up some of the weaker ones a bit. Honestly, this is a very middle ground film that I give a bit of a boost to score wise since my friends and I had fun with it while young. Is it totally trash? Nah. Def has 90s vibes, but it moves right along.

“Reptile.”