I love action films and know what I’m looking for and in my opinion the key to making a great action film can be summed up in 1 word, clarity. Understanding what is happening during an action scene is what allows me to be invested in the action. I say all this as Mortal Kombat is a film that should have worked. You have Joe Taslim star of “The Raid” as Sub Zero. You also have Hiroyuki Sanada star of “The Last Samurai” as Scorpion. On paper this sounds like a recipe for epic bloody violence however since the fight scenes in Mortal Kombat lack clarity, the film simply fails.
What leads to this lack in clarity? It’s the cinematography and the editing. In general, the film is an editing nightmare, some scene-to-scene edits are jarring and confusing and the way some of the fight scenes are edited it feels like I’m experiencing whiplash it, cuts from wide to close up with no real purpose. Then when it comes to the cinematography there’s times the camera gets way to close so it’s extremely hard to see what the actors are doing. Joe Taslim is incredible, He in many ways carries the entire film on his shoulders. Mortal Kombat is the definition of a missed opportunity. It had 1 job, which is be a fun action flick and, in my opinion, it failed miserably. I didn’t expect fine art, but I expected to be entertained and I simply wasn’t.
