Mortal Kombat (Paul W.S. Anderson, 1995) Review

With HMV going down the crapper, I took it upon myself to search around the bargin bin to see what I could find. I found this film for less that £3. Considering that I heard this was one of the better video game adaptations, I thought I may as well considering the other crap that games like Mario and Street Fighter went through as a result of Hollywood's evil grasp. Well, is it really a better adaptation or is this just another crapfest? Let's find out.

Shang Tsung (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) steals the soul of the brother of Liu Kang (Robin Shou). Kang wants revenge and sees a window of opportunity when Tsung announces a tournament called Mortal Kombat. He gains a mentor known as Lord Raiden (Christopher Lambert) and enters the tournament along with actor Johnny Cage (Linden Ashby) and a cop named Sonya Blade (Bridgette Wilson-Sampras) who have their own reasons to compete. With the warriors gathered, Shang Tsung begins Mortal Kombat.

I knew I was doomed when I saw that the age rating was 15. This is Mortal Kombat we're talking about, one of the most violent games of all time. So let's NOT make it gory. Good move. I guess that main reason they didn't do this was because the CGI looks terrible. I know it's 1995 but it looks absolutely terrible. I will admit that Goro looks fantastic (although I think he's animatronic so I guess that's justified) but the rest looks terrible. Yes, the costumes are great (just look at Sub-Zero up there) but when you take out the main essence of Mortal Kombat, you're just left with a generic martial arts film.

Do I have anything good to say? Yes. I though that, while the casting wasn't 100% perfect, the actors were pretty good and I thoroughly enjoyed this version of Johnny Cage. Yes it's cheesy but it's certainly entertaining...even if I got a bit bored in the middle. Despite the lack of gore, it's still pretty accurate to an extent.

Mortal Kombat has some good stuff but an equal amount of bad stuff which places it perfectly in the middle. I did enjoy it to an extent but will probably be nothing more than a guilty pleasure. Yes, it is miles better than other game adaptations but I'm not sure if that's saying a lot...probably not. Do I recommend it? Only to gaming fans looking for a decent video game adaptation. I haven't seen the sequel so I won't even bother with it.

Verdict:
5/10
An average adaptation of the video game. Sure it completely misses the point of the game but there is some good stuff here.