Review of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997) by Phil H — 13 Mar 2013

'Flawless victory'...well not quite, in fact neither word should enter this review again. Follow up to the reasonable effort that didn't do too badly upon release and managed to thrash JCVD and 'Street Fighter'. This isn't too far from the first film really in terms of layout and fights, nothing too spectacular and not well acted, more pantomime than cinema. But like the original there are little rays of sunshine here and there, the odd little glimmer of decent action or a nice set.

Lets not get carried away here though its so unbelievably cheesy and hammy yet all the cast seem to take it seriously, worryingly so James Remar who clearly needed the work. We do see more characters in this outing which was quite nice, a much wider range and some of whom didn't look that bad but again like the first film its hampered by outrageously bad CGI effects all over the show along with some nasty looking bluescreen work.

Its still a complete childish mess which really does bring shame to the franchise lets be honest. The odd moment of sunshine doesn't outweigh the massive amount of crap on show. The costumes look the worst really, so pathetic, as if someones mum made them in her spare time or the kinda stuff you might wear to a fancy dress party.

Due to this being an epic failure the third planned film, 'Mortal Kombat: Devastation', was shelved, not too surprising. Also interestingly...Sly Stallone turned down the role of 'Baraka', Lambert would of come back for this sequel but was committed to another film, Michael Jai White was gonna be 'Jax' but got 'Spawn' instead and Tony Jaa and Ray Park both were stunt men in this film.