Damn close to the game that the movie is based on...

The movie begins with the evil sorcerer Shang Tsung fighting and killing an adolescent boy who happens to be the young brother of Liu Kang, who ran away from the Temple Of Light due to disbelief of the supernatural Mortal Kombat martial arts tournament. Liu heads back to the Temple Of Light to find out how his brother died and vows to enter the tournament to avenge him, but doesn't share the monks' beliefs that the fate of parallel universes rest on the fighters of Mortal Kombat. In walks Raiden, who looks like a human but is actually a God of thunder and tries to talk some sense into Liu Kang.

"Man... You're not no God of thunder... You're just that Immortal guy from those Highlander movies! What're you trying to pull, huh?"
- Liu Kang

Next we meet Sonya Blade, a small blonde chick with an overly bitchy attitude searching the crime boss Kano, who has an Australian accent and a cybernetic eye for some reason. Anyway, Sonya hunts Kano for killing her partner but come to find out, Kano was actually hired by Shang Tsung just to lure Sonya on the boat to an island where Mortal Kombat takes place.

"These fighters are selfish assholes... Why does someone always have to get themselves killed before people decide to fight and save the world?"
- Raiden

Now we meet Johnny Cage, a Hollywood martial arts star that wishes to enter the tournament just to prove he's actually a skilled martial artist and not just a movie star phony. He's the clumsy funny guy in this movie.

On the boat heading to the tournament we have 2 ninjas under the power of the sorcerer, they are Sub-Zero (Aptly named for his freezing abilities.) and Scorpion (Who is an undead ninja with a spear-like weapon/creature inside his hand... Weird but I'm not making it up.)

"Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii there!" - Creature
"Awwwww... It likes you... Now GET OVER HERE!!!" - Scorpion

On the island, the battles begin and we get to see 3 other characters from the video games; Princess Kitana, Reptile, and Goro. Because I don't wanna blow the ending and make a long review short (Too late, I know.), I'm gonna wrap it up with a summary...

The martial arts action of this movie is pretty fun and entertaining, the supernatural story follows pretty closely to the games it was based off of, the music soundtrack kicks ass, and the special affects are more than decent, actually back when the movie came out the effects were pretty awesome. Downsides, some of the characters' moves are a bit over the top (Liu Kang does a midair bicycle kick when fighting Reptile and Johnny Cage goes flip crazy when fighting Scorpion), Goro looks like a large bad lip syncing Kung Fu muppet...

... Finally, for some reason it appears Reptile is made of bugs when he's defeated... Never understood that, why would a lizard be filled with maggots, cockroaches and other bugs?!?! Makes no sense!

Some people have complained about the PG-13 rating but I actually don't think the violence has to be THAT extreme to be Mortal Kombat. After all, the first Mortal Kombat WAS violent and bloody, but not nearly as much as MK2 or 3. And as such MK3 seemed a little TOO violent to really be taken serious and just isn't that fun in my opinion... No way is anybody ripping someone's torso in half or growing to the size of Godzilla to stomp on your weakened opponent. There were even "Brutalities" in which you make your opponent explode into multiple bones including several skulls and ribcages after delivering blow after blow upon them. I say the movie, Mortal Kombat deserves 4 out of 5 flawless victories... Which is 3 more than the steaming pile of dog crap that is Mortal Kombat: Annihilation!