Klass of 1995

With a new reboot due for release later this week, Paul W. S. Anderson's "Mortal Kombat" remains a flawed, yet entertaining piece of escapist fluff, despite its lack of blood and guts

The 90's were a particularly dark time for video game adaptations. In 1993, there was "Super Mario Bros.", a painful and nightmarishly inaccurate depiction of Nintendo's signature siblings. Then, 1994 saw two popular fighting games make the jump to the silver screen with lackluster results; the disastrous "Double Dragon" and the commercially successful, but critically maligned "Street Fighter". Not an auspicious start, to say the least. So, it's almost a surprise the first "Mortal Kombat" motion picture holds up as well as it does, especially considering its sequel belongs in the same class as the aforementioned cinematic debacles.

The film's plot stays relatively close to the first game, which follows a martial arts tournament staged on a remote island with the fate of humankind hanging in the balance. The noble Shaolin Monk Liu Kang (Robin Shou), charismatic movie star Johnny Cage (Linden Ashby) and Special Forces operative Sonia Blade (Bridgette Wilson) are selected by Lord Raiden (Christopher Lambert), the god of thunder, to ensure good prevails and prevent the tournament's host, Shang Tsung (Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa) from claiming claiming his 10th straight victory. The film also stars Talisa Soto as Kitana and features Chris Casamassa and François Petit as fan-favorites Scorpion and Sub-Zero, respectively.

Aside from some cosmetic changes and character tweaks, the largest departure "Mortal Kombat" made from its source material was sanitizing the gore to secure a PG-13 rating. The first game's rise to prominence came with a whirlwind of controversy, as it depicted beheadings, impalings, immolations, spine rips and various other forms of mutilation in full digitized glory. Instead, the film relied more on Hong Kong action influences and fan service to sell its story. Having various actors and stunt people with martial arts backgrounds helped give the necessary weight and fluidity to the fight scenes. Robin Shou himself staged two of the movie's best brawls; his own matchup against the cold-blooded Reptile and Johnny Cage's hellish showdown with Scorpion. Paul Anderson's direction is solid and the choreography is shot fairly well, but the film certainly has its shortcomings. The structuring of the story is rather weak, the dialogue is cheesy and most of the visual effects fall flat, even by 1995's standards. It's far from being a masterpiece, but it's a fun time capsule movie and it does feature one of the greatest theme songs of all time. While it's not nearly as bloody as its arcade counterparts, it's still one of the best video game movies ever made. However, considering how low that bar is, that isn't necessarily the strongest compliment. C+