Mortal Kombat - Annihilation

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General		Extras
Category	Martial Arts	Theatrical Trailer(s)	Yes, 1
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1997	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	95 minutes	Other Extras	Cast & Crew Interviews Cast & Crew Biographies
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Movie
Region	4	Director	John R. Leonetti
Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Robin Shou Talisa Soto Brian Thompson Sandra Hess Lynn Red Williams Irina Pantaeva James Remar
RRP	$34.95	Music	George S. Clinton

    Mortal Kombat - Annihilation has a plot that is actually quite hard to follow at first. Ultimately, though, it is just a Martial Arts movie with quite high production values, so if you like that style of movie, then you are likely to like this one. I personally have neither seen the original Mortal Kombat or played the video game, so I may be at a slight disadvantage, but the movie does open with a potted summary of the conclusion of the first movie. All of this style of movie have the same plot, anyway - bad guy plans take-over of the world, good guy fights through many minions until the ultimate battle with the bad guy which the good guy always wins - and you really only look at them for the action.

    Basically, Shao-Kahn (Brian Thompson) is the bad guy who lives in a place called the Otherworld. Shao-Kahn (or perhaps one of his underlings, I'm not quite clear on that point) was defeated in Mortal Kombat by Liu Kang (Robin Shou) which guaranteed that our world would be left alone for a generation. Shao-Kahn has other ideas, and has found a way to reopen the portal between the two worlds and is intent on taking over our world.

    Lots and lots and lots of Martial Arts action follow both in this world and in the Otherworld. There are a bunch of really cool bad guys, bad girls and bad robots which need to be defeated on the way to the end sequence. The plot is really not worth describing much beyond this, so I won't bother, but in the end the good guys win (is there ever any doubt?) even though they look hugely outclassed in the final battles.

    There isn't any character development, but the cinematography and special effects are quite nice, and there are lots of biffs, thuds and truckloads of way over-the-top Martial Arts to keep you amused.

Video

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer was razor sharp at all times. Shadow detail was mostly superb, but I felt a few early scenes were a little lacking in detail. No low level noise was present.

    The colours were clear and vibrant.

    No MPEG artefacts were seen. Film-to-video artefacts were non-existent. Film artefacts were rare, commensurate with the recent vintage of this film.

Audio

    There were a number of minor faults with the audio on this DVD. There are two slight audio dropouts, one at 6:17 and the other at 56:00.

    Dialogue was reasonably clear, though there wasn't a lot of dialogue during the frequent action sequences. Some of the dialogue appears marginally out of sync, but I felt that this was slightly sloppy ADR work rather than a fault with the transfer.

    The music is suitably techno, and appropriate for a movie based on a video game. Indeed, the entire movie looks much like a video game.

     The surround channels were heavily used for music and special effects. A wide, expansive sound stage was created for this movie which is great at pulling you into the on-screen action.

    The .1 channel was used heavily in this soundtrack. Every thump, biff and whack was accentuated by a kick from the subwoofer. Many of the explosions were as well, but not all of them, which disappointed me slightly, as I would have preferred some of the explosions to be louder to fit with the rest of the sound.

Menu

Theatrical Trailer

Cast & Crew Interviews

    There is one glitch in these interviews. In the interview with Irina Pantaeva, 0:07 into her answer to the second question, there is quite a large glitch that covers approximately 1/5th of the screen, but only lasts a single frame, so it flashes by very quickly.

Cast & Crew Biographies

    The video quality is excellent, and basically faultless.

    The audio quality is very good with aggressive surround effects. It could, however, have been a little better in the 'slam' department at times.

    The extras are very basic.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna
28th December 1998