• IMDb score- 6.2/10

• Runtime- 1h 50min

• Director- Simon McQuoid

Mortal kombat (2021) is a cinematic reboot of 90’s Mortal Kombat movie series, which arguably failed to put an impression on its cinematic audience, despite being based on a video game, that has a cult fan base since its first debut. Mortal Kombat (2021), is based on Mortal Kombat video game, developed by Midway games in 1992, from the ideas of Ed Boon and John Tobias. The movie revolves around its exact video game plot, with very minor changes to its build-up concepts. The movie had a worldwide theatrical release on 16th April, 2021 and 23rd April for India and US release, but due to constant delays it got available on OTT platforms like BookMyShow, AppleTV, Google Play Movies from 4th june, 2021 in India.

Directed by Simon McQuoid, who had his directorial debut to the worldwide movie audience with this movie.  McQuoid has did a great job at putting out a complex and diverse individual character origin sub-plots in the story, in an integrated one simple plot of the movie. The casting of the movie includes  multinational actors,  like Lewis Tan as Cole Young, Mehcad Brooks as Jax, Josh Lawson as Kano, Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade, Ludi Lin as Liu Kang, Joe Taslim as Sub-Zero, Hiroyuki Sanada as Scorpion and so on. Benjamin Wallfisch has did a splendid part in designing the powerful backdrop of the entire movie and particularly for its action sequences. Benjamin worked on- Techno Syndrome(theme), VWLS Emergence and Firestorm(Background score).

Mortal Kombat (2021) movie sticks to its original story plot and characters, hinting at a main grand tournament between all the chosen and worthy competitors of the contesting Six Realms/Dimensions. And rather hastily jumping into the grand conclusive events of the MK story arc, the director has played smart to first introducing, developing, sculpting the characters of the final storyline. Here, not all the biggie characters are put into an introductory part of the movie, and so the storyteller refrained from over complicating the story to be unfolding in several sequels.

Talking about the pros of the movie, its prime positive comes, as discussed specified before, its simplified narration and effective integration of a overly complicated multi-characters sub-plot origin stories. The story is intriguing, well-weaved, fast paced. Viewers will not be bored so often through the movie (a slight a bit of boring and stretched scenes are definitely present the movie). Action sequences are creative and well synced, with usual and upto the mark MK legacy.

Cons of the movie, includes its majorly cropped and some missing vital details about some characters of the story, which may have been deliberately done to further stretch the cinematic franchise into several more sequels to come. The actions are great, but their Vfx shots seems fading to a below premium standard at some points, which is otherwise praise worthy and maintained throughout the movie.

Performances are highly appreciable in the movie, from all the actors involved. Lewis Tan, Mehcad Brooks, Jessica McNamee, Ludi Lin justified their roles. Hiroyuki Sanada and Joe Taslim as Scorpion/Hanzo Hasashi and Sub-Zero/Bi-han respectively, were stand outs in terms of well-crafted performances. They portrayed the legendary rivalry of two clans, beyond praises. But, Josh Lawson as Kano, was the most entertaining and best part of the whole movie.

For the concluding note, Mortal Kombat (2021) is a fun, enjoyable, and entertaining movie. It holds a lot more elements for its age old video games fan base, who have grown up playing the iconic game. For its Action, Cinematography, storytelling and Visuals, it’s a sure one time watch. But due to the franchise’s trade mark violence and strong graphic contents throughout the movie, the content is not appropriate for below 13 audience.

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