Mortal Kombat Critic Reviews

A martial arts action-adventure with wondrous special effects and witty production design, it effectively combines supernatural terror, a mythical slay-the-dragon, save-the-princess odyssey and even a spiritual quest for self-knowledge. [21 Aug 1995 Pg. F3]Read the full review

Mortal Kombat the movie has everything a teenage boy could want: snakes that jut out of a villain's palms, acrobatic kung- fu fighting and a couple of battling babes. Everything, that is, but an interesting plot, decent dialogue and compelling actingRead the full review

But where others have sunk in the mire of imitation, director Paul Anderson and writer Kevin Droney effect a viable balance between exquisitely choreographed action and ironic visual and verbal counterpoint.Read the full review

And although director Paul Anderson treats the story with appropriate deadpan respect, there are enough sparks of humor (particularly generated by Linden Ashby as a shallow martial-arts actor who worries that he's a fake, with good reason) to amuse the adults accompanying the 10-year-old boys in the audience.Read the full review

A mix of martial-arts and special-effects magic, the film serves its nonstop confrontations either straight up or with a twist (as when they involve Kombatants with special powers, like Sub-Zero, Reptile and Scorpion).Read the full review

The movie's extensive martial arts sequences, in which combatants bounce off each other doing triple handsprings, suggest a slightly more earthbound version of the aerial ballets in Hong Kong action-adventure films.Read the full review