Do you ever get a moment when you try to say something nice despite a disappointing outcome? That's pretty much how I felt after watching the Mortal Kombat reboot directed by Simon McQuoid, making his first film directing debut. Before anyone says that I am not a Mortal Kombat fan like several audience reviewers would say, I have been following the Mortal Kombat games for quite a while ever since Mortal Kombat 4/Gold on the Nintendo 64.
- I'm really struggling to find anything good to say about the film other than the first 13 minutes involving Hanzo Hasashi and Bi-Han's past.
- The pacing was very uneven which felt like it was either too fast and slow which makes it rather hard to follow what is going on within the paper-thin plot.
- Despite a very potential cast in which I was eager to see how the likes of Lewis Tan and Ludi Lin (funny enough that the two were candidates for Marvel's Shang Chi before Simu Liu was given the role), but sadly they were not able to bring their acting to their best which left their entire characters rather stale, uninteresting and lacking charisma or personality (which also applied to the rest of the cast maybe with the exception of Josh Lawson?)
- Therefore I felt the entire cast and characters were kind of wasted and some had little screen time, back story or action such as Tadanobu Asano's Raiden, Chin Han's Shang Tsung, Goro, Kabal, Reiko and poor Nitara which gave me a reminescene of Suicide Squad's Slipknot for some odd reason.
- The fight choreography wasn't quite as tight as I had hoped despite the gory fatalities and there are very questionable and poor editing within the film's fight scenes.
Overall, Simon McQuoid's Mortal Kombat failed to pack a punch to give this reboot a "flawless victory", but more like a "flawless dud."
My Rating: 4/10