Mortal Kombat II – Review

So, you saw the first one. You know what you are in for. The question is, will this one be better? In many ways, yes. In plenty of others however, this is still somewhat frustrating and the same kind of movie as the first. So, let’s focus on the good, and see where things take us.

After a quick flashback origin story for Kitana (Rudolph) and an introduction to villain Shao Khan (Ford), the dimensional battles of Mortal Kombat are deciding which realms can conquer which. As we reach our current time, we get into the current tournament with our surviving heroes of Earthrealm from the first film, as new baddies get ready to attack them. The new wrinkle? 90s Hollywood action star Johnny Cage (Urban) is chosen as one of the representatives of Earth.

The good news is that Cage is one of the better parts of the film. He is consistently entertaining, and Urban fits into this world just as he does in pretty much anything. Also, the plot moving its focus away from the first part’s latching onto Cole Young (Tan) was a smart move. Mostly the script opens quickly and focuses on the fighting, but the story itself doesn’t offer a whole lot of interesting writing to keep the brain engaged.

It’s not like the video game source material has a ton of crazy high-concept storyline material to utilize in the movies, but so far none of them have done all that much to enhance the action with anything too fancy script wise. There are visual niceties and bloody martial arts, but characters and plot are only so interesting which limits the stakes from raising too high.