Mortal Kombat (2021)

Here's the thing about the 2021 Mortal Kombat reboot: it had exactly one job. One. Deliver bone-crunching, over-the-top, fatality-drenched carnage with a bit of heart holding it together. That's it. That's the whole brief. And somehow, despite every advantage a property this beloved should carry into a modern blockbuster, it still manages to underdeliver. That's almost impressive in its own right.

Let me be fair. The filmmakers clearly know their audience. The fan service is dialled up, the violence is gratuitous in exactly the way you'd want, and yes, "Get over here!" lands to a cheer-worthy degree. There are flashes of genuine fun here, moments where you remember why this franchise has endured for decades and why people were genuinely excited for a proper cinematic comeback. But then the script opens its mouth, and the spell breaks.

The decision to anchor the whole thing around Cole Young, a brand-new original character dropped into the middle of this mythological chaos, is baffling. I understand the instinct: give newcomers a point-of-view character, someone to discover this world alongside. But Cole is so flatly written, so thoroughly uninteresting, that he ends up being a weight dragging the film down every time the camera drifts his way. His origin story feels like homework. The exposition the script dumps through him and around him is treated like a chore, rattled off at pace as though the writers were embarrassed by it but knew they had no choice.

The action, when it kicks in, is flashy but frustrating. Too often it's shot too dark, cut too fast, or obscured by dodgy CGI that swings wildly between impressive and cheap-looking. The film wants to be John Wick meeting The Matrix at the halfway point and pulling off something electric. It has the ambition. It doesn't have the style, the patience, or the coherence to pull it off. The humour feels forced, the training sequences drag, and the lore dumps never connect into anything that pulses with life.

Which brings me to Hiroyuki Sanada, who is, without any exaggeration, the only reason this film avoids being written off entirely. His performance as Hanzo Hasashi, the man who becomes Scorpion, carries a quiet intensity and genuine emotional weight that belongs in a far better film. Every scene he's in sharpens. He brings gravitas that the script doesn't earn but somehow gets anyway, purely through the force of his presence. He is the soul of Mortal Kombat, the beating heart it desperately needed more of, and the fact that he's relegated to the margins for so much of the runtime is the film's single biggest mistake. Give Sanada a Scorpion film built around his performance and I'd be first in line.

If you're a fan of the games and you're craving a fix of arcade violence rendered in live action, there's enough here to scratch that itch. Sanada alone makes it worth a sit. But as a reboot? As a proper launching pad for a franchise? It's a missed opportunity of the most frustrating kind, the kind where you can see exactly what it should have been and feel the gap between that vision and what actually ended up on screen. More missed uppercut than flawless victory. Mortal Kombat deserved better than this.

Two stars.

Rating: ★★ (2/5)

Originally logged on Letterboxd.