Shadows on the Wall | Mortal Kombat II

Mortal Kombat II

dir Simon McQuoid
scr Jeremy Slater
prd James Wan, Toby Emmerich, Todd Garner, E Bennett Walsh, Simon McQuoid
with Karl Urban, Adeline Rudolph, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson, Ludi Lin, Tadanobu Asano, Hiroyuki Sanada, Mehcad Brooks, Tati Gabrielle, Martyn Ford, Max Huang, Lewis Tan, Joe Taslim
release US/UK 8.May.26
26/Australia Warners 1h56

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Gamers may enjoy this snappy follow-up to the 2021 hit, even if (or perhaps because) the movie doubles down on its elaborate mythology and increasingly extended cast of characters. So while mere mortals may struggle to keep up with what's happening, director Simon McQuoid keeps us distracted with whizzy camerawork, flashy fight choreo and rather a lot of digital mayhem. And the violence is often jaw-droppingly grisly.

Now ruling Outworld, the brutal Shao Kahn (Ford) has plans to finally conquer Earthrealm in the next tournament. So Earthrealm's Lord Raiden (Asano) recruits movie star Johnny Cage (Urban) to join his champions Sonya (McNamee), Liu Kang (Lin) and Jax (Brooks). But Johnny has no superpowers, and has to improvise with his stunt training. They get help from Kitana (Rudolph), a warrior princess seeking revenge after Shao Kahn killed her father in the prologue, as well as revived Aussie chatterbox Kano (Lawson). But to beat him, they'll need to strip Shao Kahn of his immortality.

All of this centres around a magical amulet. To find it, the team sneaks into Shao Khan's palace, where things take a very bad turn, sending them to the Netherrealm to get help from an old friend (Sanada). Ruthless fighters pop up everywhere, many also returned from the dead, taking on our heroes with their various powers. So the plot is little more than one battle after another, often with two or three intercut simultaneously just to keep us on our toes.

Aside from the vicious, well-staged fight scenes, the actors must grapple with a tone that swerves between snarky insults and earnest plot exposition. Urban has the most fun with this as the blustering Johnny, reluctantly diving into the fray and surprised each time he survives a faceoff. He's a cool match for Lawson's scene-stealing Kano, making us want more fireworks between them. Other cast members get a moment to shine, while Asano and Sanada provide some expert gravitas.

The blinding array of characters is not easy to keep straight, especially as they seem to appear and vanish like videogame avatars, most of whom are oddly dressed in fetish gear. As a result, even the most astonishingly violent scenes begin to feel as corny as the hilarious clip from Johnny's 1996 action classic Uncaged Fury. But then everything is so silly that it blurs into nonsense, so trying to work out what it means feels pointless. Aside from setting things up for another tournament.

themes, language, violence 5.May.26

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