Review: Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997) Rating: 3.0 stars (out of 4.0) ******************************** Key to rating system: 2.0 stars Debatable 2.5 stars Some people may like it 3.0 stars I liked it 3.5 stars I am biased in favor of the movie 4.0 stars I felt the movie's impact personally or it stood out ********************************* A Movie Review by David Sunga
Directed by: John Leonetti
Screenplay written by: Brent Friedman and Bryce Zabel (original story written by Lawrence Kasanoff, Joshua Wexler, and John Tobias).
Starring: Robin Shou, Taliso Soto, James Remar, Sandra Hess, Lynn "Red" Williams
Ingredients: Other dimensions, fate of the world, martial arts heroes, costumed villains, karate babes
Synopsis: This is not a sentimental movie, a 'date' movie, or a thriller. It's the sequel to ‘Mortal Kombat,' a 1995 movie based on a popular video game. In the original ‘Mortal Kombat' an immortal named Lord Rayden chose three heroes - - nice Hong Kong guy Liu Kang, SWAT team leader Sonya Blade, and movie star Johnny Cage - - to represent the planet earth in a high stakes interdimensional martial arts tournament called Mortal Kombat. Talisa Soto played Kitana, the princess from another dimension who helped the heroes succeed. In this sequel, ‘Mortal Kombat: Annihilation,' no sooner do the victorious heroes return to earth with their friend Princess Kitana than another crisis presents itself. Shao-Kahn, the evil emperor of Outworld, has hatched a plot to kill Lord Rayden and the heroes, and take over the earth by merging it with another dimension. Shao-Kahn kills Johnny, captures Kitana to set a death trap for the heroes, and then sets about destroying the earth with rocket-launching techno-ninjas, a zombified queen, a centaur creature, scorpion monsters, martial arts armies, and evil siblings. Meanwhile the heroes enlist the aid of Sonya Blade's old SWAT team pal Jax, and start kicking booty. Will good triumph over evil?
Opinion: This is the kind of movie that adolescent guys will love. If you liked the first ‘Mortal Kombat,' with it's hyperactive high-kicking male and female leads, you'll like this movie, which emphasizes state-of-the-art special effects, great fight photography, and martial arts choreography, and de-emphasizes a confusing mythic plot. The visual "oomph" emphasis is probably due to that fact that director John Leonetti is best known for photography - - he was the director of photography on ‘The Mask' and on ‘Mortal Kombat,' while his brother Matthew shot ‘Star Trek: First Contact.' ‘Mortal Kombat: Annihilation' uses an eclectic blend of fresh fight choreography from a number of different fighting arts involving plenty of aerial kicks and trampoline-style spinning jumps. The CG (computer generated) characters manage to do decent fight scenes as well. In other words, this movie puts American fight choreography up there with Hong Kong wu shu. For Asian-Americans and for Hollywood, ‘Mortal Kombat: Annihilation' will be a test of how willing the American public is to pay money to view an Asian movie protagonist. Producer Larry Kasanoff, who also produced ‘Terminator 2' is producing this film.
Stars: Robin Shou, the leading man in ‘Mortal Kombat' and ‘Mortal Kombat: Annihiliation' was born in Hong Kong but moved to Los Angeles at age eleven and obtained a degree in civil engineering from CSU Los Angeles. He worked for a year and half as a soil engineer, but eventually moved to Hong Kong, became a movie stuntman, and finally worked his way into playing villains. After nine years of Hong Kong movies, he went to a friend's barbecue in California and met an agent, who suggested that Robin audition for ‘Mortal Kombat.' Robin's martial arts style is wu shu, a cinematic mixture of martial arts forms and dramatic presentation. As a college he became so excited about wushu that he sold his car and skipped a quarter of school to fly to China and study it.
Model-turned-actress Talisa Soto is best known for playing James Bond Girl Lupe Lamora in ‘License to Kill.' To my knowledge she is the first Hispanic Bond Girl.
Reviewed by David Sunga November 21, 1997
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