The first Mortal Kombat game was meant to be a homage to the classic Bruce Lee movie Enter the Dragon. The first movie of Mortal Kombat seems to be the same way. A bunch of fighting experts get together on an island to fight each other for a chance to compete against Shang Tsung. The good guys are guided by Raiden (Christopher Lambert), a Thunder God. If someone loses the final battle, Earth will be taken over by evil forces. I think Mortal Kombat is the perfect video game movie—in the video game, people beat each other up, and this movie is no different.

The fight scenes are all pretty cool, although I wish this movie was rated R so there could be some blood. It gets to be a bit ridiculous when someone gets punched fifty times only to receive a bloody lip! The music, especially the opening theme, is great. The weakest point of this movie is the ending… It looks really shoddy and is possibly the most blatant “to be continued” ending I have ever seen—although Super Mario Bros. also has a similar ending.

Another fault with Mortal Kombat is Christopher Lambert as Raiden. He speaks in a raspy voices, tells jokes that aren’t funny, and laughs at himself. He look insane with long, white hair, but compared to the actor that portrays Raiden in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Christopher Lambert gives a Marlon Brando caliber performance.

If you like kung fu movies, Mortal Kombat will definitely do the trick.

I give Mortal Kombat ***1/2 out of ****.

I'm not going to lie. When I first saw this movie, I happened to enjoy it. I used to play the crap out of the Mortal Kombat series. When I first heard that they were making a movie based on this excellent fighting game series, I was psyched. I couldn't wait to see Johnny Cage and Scorpion kick a whole lot of ass. These two characters actually fight each other, in one of my favorite fights in the movie.

I'm trying to think of things that I didn't like in the movie. Sonya Blades sucked. that lady can't act. I thought that the way the Lui Kang defeats Subzero, is a bit lame. I also didn't like how they did Reptile.

the ending was crappy.

Other than Raiden, the other characters were done well.

*** out of ****