This is something the new Mortal Kombat<\/em> reboot\u00a0\u2013 bless its dumb, bloody, violent heart\u00a0\u2013 understands completely. There\u2019s a framework to Greg Russo and Dave Callaham\u2019s script, but only as much as is required to get us to the brutal beatdowns. The plot only barely makes sense and the characters are hardly developed beyond their signature catchphrases. But that\u2019s not why we\u2019re here. We\u2019re here for wild violence, and that Mortal Kombat<\/em> delivers in gory heaps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In case you need a plot, here it is: Cole Young (Lewis Tan) is a fighter who learns he\u2019s descended from a legendary warrior, Hanzo Hasashi (Hiroyuki Sanada). Cole is recruited by ex-military operatives Jax (Mehcad Brooks) and Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) to join an interdimensional battle called Mortal Kombat. The good guys, led by Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano) represent Earthrealm and fight for… um… Earth. The bad guys are from Outworld, and are led by Shang Tsung (Chin Han). Their ranks include Sub-Zero, Hanzo Hasashi\u2019s blood enemy. Cole, Jax, Sonya and mouthy mercenary Kano (Josh Lawson) show up at Raiden\u2019s temple to train and join the fight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s enough story and characters here to fit into an Infinity War<\/em>-length movie, and if Russo, Callaham and director Simon McQuoid wanted to, they could have fleshed out every character\u2019s backstory and given them full arcs. Mercifully, they skip all of this in the interest of keeping things at a violent clip and clocking the end product in at just under two hours. Sure, Mortal Kombat<\/em> would have been a richer movie if it explained everyone\u2019s motivation and explored their relationships. But great storytelling isn\u2019t the point. Fights<\/em> are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, how are those fights? They\u2019re fun! McQuoid wastes no time, starting with a bloody battle in the prologue and barely stopping to breathe from then on. There are dragons made of fire, a guy with four massive arms, and a character who uses his hat like a buzzsaw. Early on, Sub-Zero freezes another character\u2019s arms, then chops them clean off with his hands. Likely none of these moves are surprising to fans of the game, but that doesn\u2019t diminish the fact that they look very cool in live action. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Also cool: Lawson\u2019s Kano, whose solid gold quipping stands out among a sea of pointless exposition-dumping and utterances of iconic in-game lines (to be fair, one of those utterances is his, and it is priceless). He\u2019s the only character with a personality. Unsurprisingly, Lawson is also the movie\u2019s most energetic performer, and has a great time sarcastically gnawing on the scenery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the end, your mileage with Mortal Kombat<\/em> depends on what you\u2019re hoping to get from it. It\u2019s a movie for people with simple needs, and a desire to be mindlessly entertained for a couple of hours. If your expectations are any loftier than that, you\u2019ll be disappointed. It\u2019s hard to imagine, however, anyone coming in thinking they\u2019ll get anything more profound than what\u2019s offered here. It\u2019s not great, but hey, it\u2019s Mortal Kombat<\/em>, and maybe that\u2019s enough. How good is the latest feature film adaptation of the beloved video game? Well, that depends on what you want out of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":16363,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[340],"tags":[1098],"class_list":["post-16360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-movie-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/577"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/mortal2-1024x512.jpg\")
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nB-<\/strong><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"