Review of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997) by Eric C — 30 Nov 2009

REVIEW REQUESTED BY GABBO E.

Well after a great finale in the first film and a pretty intriguing beginning this film begins to fall flat on its face. The action scenes are okay, but tend to rely too much on special effects. The music is still good, but the performances are a bit lagging, even by Robin Shou, who returns as Lui Kang.

The biggest flaw for this film is the fact that now we are overrun with characters, each given their own fight scene, leaving too little time for character and story development. A third film was planned, so I don't understand why they just didn't save some characters for a future film. Because of this there are some great characters that are just shown for a few seconds(Baraka huh).

James Remar is a decent enough follow up Raiden from Christopher Lambert, but gets the unfortunate task at not being on screen too long.

Talisa Soto returns as Kitana and does a good job, she wasn't a big part of the first film, but her role is a bit expanded here.

Sandra Hess takes over the role of Sonya from Bridgette Wilson and is actually better in her performance and prettier, unfortunately like everyone else her characters development is dwindled down.

Brian Johnson is actually the only one in this film that gives a solid performance as Shao Kahn, his lines are a bit nerve wracking at times, but still fun to watch.

I saw this in the theaters and at the time enjoyed the film, but as I got older I notice all the flaws, go see this if you'd like, but you don't have too.

3 out of 5 stars.

Another letdown is that this film tries to combine elements from all the MK films into one film, the first film dealt 95% with elements that were only in MK 1.