Mortal Kombat

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

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]

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

It is one continuous fight sequence from opening scene to final credits, but lacks the blood, profanity, and gore that would have merited a more adult rating.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

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.

Variety Leonard Klady

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.

TV Guide Staff(not credited)

Expect lots of earsplitting music, garish visuals and badly staged martial arts action.

Washington Post Richard Harrington

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).

Empire Kim Newman

The filmmakers try to solve the problem of turning an experience which merely consists of a series of fights into a story by... ignoring it, presenting a film which merely consists of a series of fights.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

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.

The New Yorker Bruce Diones

But soon the movie falls flat under an uninspired good-versus-evil plot and pathetically simpleminded dialogue.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

It is, in essence, the video game transferred part and parcel to the screen, and very well at that.

San Francisco Chronicle Laura Evenson

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 acting

USA Today Susan Wloszczyna

Just like the popular (and more graphically violent) video game it's spun from, kung-fooy and kartoony Kombat shoves plot and personality aside to focus on action cloaked in mystic mumbo-jumbo and gloomy mock-gothic graphics. [21 Aug 1995 Pg. 03.D]