Washed-up MMA fighter Cole Young (Lewis Tan) learns of an ancient battle when he’s recruited by Jax (Mehcad Brooks) and Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) to stand against the enemies of Outworld who wish to take over Earth.

Having not played the games I’m pretty much a Mortal Kombat novice. Though that being said, I did watch the 1995 Mortal Kombat film earlier this year, can’t say I remember much about it though so really this Mortal Kombat is a blank slate for me.

The plot of Mortal Kombat doesn’t feature a big tournament, instead they talk about it a lot and it’s more a getting the team together to prepare to fight in the tournament kind of film. So really it feels like a lot of setup for the next film – which hopefully will be made otherwise this one would’ve been a bit of a waste of time.

The majority of the special effects and fight sequences look great. In fact, Mortal Kombat starts and ends on a high as it’s bookended by fights between Scorpion (Hiroyuki Sanada) and Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim). Those fights are very entertaining and the second one where what can be amounted to superpowers are involved, is truly an excellent way to bring things to a close. The rest of the fights don’t quite hit that standard and a few seem to end before they have even begun. That said, all the fights are pretty bloody and gory so if you like that kind of thing you’re in luck.

A lot of the characters in Mortal Kombat feel pretty generic and don’t have too much personality. While Lewis Tan is great at the fight sequences, his Cole is the usual chosen one character and is defined by his love of his family and not much else. The rest of the heroes aren’t given much of a backstory or personalities and, for many of them, there isn’t a feeling of camaraderie between them that there should be when you have a team of heroes. Kano (Josh Lawson) almost feels like he’s in another film entirely as his personality is the biggest out of all the characters. He’s loud, brash and argumentative and they way he delivers one-liners just feels out of place as the rest of the characters are quite dour and serious. He does make it so things don’t get too dull but it still feels a little weird.

Mortal Kombat is a bit of a mixed bag but even though a lot of the characters are pretty generic (they’re fighters who all have some sort of special power), the plot moves at a good pace and the fights keep coming so you never really get bored. 3/5.