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Here’s the important thing for fans to know: it’s as R-rated as the games themselves. For the first time really, the truly gruesome appeal of “Mortal Kombat” makes it to the big screen... [But] While the film comes to life in ways that video game flicks often fail to do in its action scenes, it grinds to a halt during a deadly long training/destiny centerpiece that drags the film out to almost 110 minutes, and then it ends with a whimper, setting up what feels like a franchise instead of providing a satisfying finale.

No doubt some fans of crappy video game flicks are going to prefer Paul W.S. Anderson’s original film... The new version doesn’t look like it belongs on a computer screen and no one shouts “Mortal Kombat!” every five minutes either, which may disappoint hard-core fans. Those who just want to watch a cool, competent and only semi-dumb action movie, though, can thank God for small favors like that.

"Mortal Kombat" unfortunately doesn't bring the same kind of ingenuity to adapting the video games it's named after... [The film] tries a few different strategies to turn fighting-game material into a compelling narrative, none of which really work because they all bump up against each other.

Though the filmmakers definitely wanted to please the gore-starved faithful by getting an R rating (and threw a lot of gratuitous “fuck”s in the dialogue to seal the deal), you do get the impression they don’t want to alienate ordinary viewers either. The result is kombat that isn’t as viscerally mortal as it wants to be. Yell “Flawless! Victory!” all you want, but this is just an ordinary product hoping enough people buy it to justify a sequel.

Is it too much to ask that a dumb movie also be fun? Compared to [Paul W.S. Anderson's 1995 adaptation], the new Mortal Kombat, directed by first-timer Simon McQuoid, barely qualifies as entertainment. It is a patience-testing exercise that repetitively paces a small handful of locations... while the audience hopes for something, anything to happen. Call it "Waiting For Goro."

Apart from the occasional one-liner... the film seems to want to take this nonsense deadly seriously. Even on a pure action-movie level, the violence is only interesting when it’s so over-the-top that it reaches the realm of satire. All of which is to say, I was entertained by “Mortal Kombat” more often than I wasn’t, but I can’t guarantee that I had the kind of good time that the filmmakers intended to create.

“Mortal Kombat” gets the R-rated reboot its fans feel the property deserves... [The] ruthless finishing moves may be the selling point here, but it’s the more nuts-and-bolts backstory that matters if the studio hopes to build a fresh film franchise around the property.

Frankly, the original "Mortal Kombat" arcade game had a better sense of narrative momentum; at least there the fights progressed toward a final showdown with the big bosses. Without spoiling this "Mortal Kombat," it mostly feels like a giant prologue to something else. Still, for sheer visual panache, intricate fight scenes, and the fact that it’s not an out-and-out embarrassment, "Mortal Kombat" rates very highly on the list of video game movies.

With so many characters, the movie spends too much time on discovery and not enough on showing those powers in action... While the carnage demonstrates some imagination (can ice cauterize wounds? Did a hat just turn into a table saw?), the rules, extending even to whether death is permanent, are so arbitrary that nothing matters. Test … your patience.

Even taking this adaptation of the game on its decidedly R-rated terms, the movie offers few of the visceral thrills that might produce a collective audience response... Nothing will probably dissuade those excited about the film from seeing it...For those on the fence, though, "Mortal Kombat" is hardly worth starting, much less finishing,

The film feels like pure fan service... [and] In spite of its occasionally engaging displays of gnarly brutality, this Mortal Kombat too often feels like an adaptation of a player select screen.

Occasionally fun but deeply misguided... ["Mortal Kombat"] is so busy straining to upconvert its ’90s soul for the modern blockbuster economy that it soon feels less like a bootleg “Avengers” that a crack team of modders have re-skinned to resemble a classic fighting game franchise.