Mortal Kombat (2021) - 4/5

This is a love letter to fans of the video game, and delivers in a long, long string of mostly one-on-one fights with just enough plot in between to give us an idea of the character motivations in play. Instead of completely neglecting substance in favor of style, it settles for nuggets of hard-hitting character motivation that doesn’t get in the way of what the audience is there to see: awesome action. A few of the fights are a bit too dark or overly edited, but that still leaves a good dozen or so great fights. Not that it’s a high bar, but this is the best video game movie to date.

Content warning: some gore, some language

Closest comparison: It the visual sensibilities The Great Wall with the non-stop fight scenes of The Raid.

Setting: Action
Plot: Action
Tone: Action

Wu Assassins (Netflix) - 2/5

This show could have been great, and it starts off well. But like so many other shows it loses its way about halfway through. The martial arts is very good, where present, but they use drama for drama’s sake to pad out the runtime, a common trend among Netflix titles. The acting is overall mildly uninteresting, except for an ancient mystic wu assassin character who provides top tier terrible acting every moment she’s on screen. The effects are modern TV level and ultimately not even the presence of Iko Uwais and Mark Dacascos can salvage the show from boredom.

Closest comparison: It’s like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon by way of The Fast and the Furious, but without the fun.

Setting: Modern Crime
Plot: Martial Arts
Tone: Fantasy