| Mortal Kombat (1995) Cast: Christopher Lambert,Robin Shou,Linden Ashby,Brigette Wilson,Talisa Soto,Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa,Gregory Hickcox Three warriors compete in a tournament to keep the portals of earth closed from Shang Tsung who has a nasty habit of stealing souls. Like I said before this is Tagawa's movie.Tagawa has always been a great villian but he has a habit of choosing bad movies to lend his talent to.(Showdown In Little Tokyo and Kickboxer 2) However this time around he picked a decent movie. Unfortunately though the acting by everybody not named Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa is bad,especially Lambert who looks absoluately ridiculous as a chinese god of thunder, his accent for a change actually works for the part, but Lambert himself is just not convincing as Rayden the "God of thunder". Ashby and Wilson come off wooden and Shou is an excellent martial artist and we get what we would expect more muscle than talk, and really that's fine with me. But Tagawa is the man who makes this movie worth the price of rental, .not only is he impressive in the actionscenes but he also invests the part with lots of charisma that's hard to beat and his villian really makes the movie. The late Hickcox who played Jax was also pretty good (And was good in Bloodfist III) but is disappointingly wasted. Overall a flawed movie but still worth a look especially for the action scenes. Also let it be said that this is the best movie ever, to be based on a video game. D.Paul Anderson*** |