imdb/title/tt2109248/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 Michael Bay is at it again, this time with an entirely new cast sans-Transformers. The cast (including Mark Wahlberg) does the best they can between the action spurts, with the best story since the original film (actually a little better), but the movies drama is all sucked out of it to make room for Bays tropes. I cant help but feel this concept could have been handled better by a different Director. Bay gives the Transformers a fourth spin around the block though. There is actually little Transformers to speak of in the first half hour of this nearly 3 hour movie (yes, its 2 hours and 45 minutes long). The Transformers, good and bad have all but been hunted down by the government, when Prime is discovered in hiding by a wanna-be inventor (Wahlberg). Action ensues for another good 2 hours from there leading up to an inevitable huge climax, where of course there has to be yet another alien trinket (this time introduced very late in the movie) that needs to be kept from the bad guys. (There was already so much here to play with story-wise that it was yet another useless MacGuffin just like the last two films) I enjoyed the 3D presentation, and actually is the best Ive seen all summer, and giving each of the Transformers more distinctive looks and personalities helped as well unlike in the former films the characters got very muddled in fight scenes making it very hard to pick apart any of them other than Bumble-Bee and Optimus Prime. Unfortunately Michael Bay goes overboard on lens flair, slow-motion, awkward close-ups, and switching between IMAX shots and normal Panavision. The switch gets very distracting and doesnt flow as well as it did with the previous installments or other films that have utilized the technology. At one point I finally had to ask myself why Bay simply didnt film in 1:85.1 (or roughly 16X9 shape like flat-screen TVs) throughout the film. A lot of the shots make no sense and go back and fourth between the formats so much it loses its luster. Michael Bay tries to rip-off Christopher Nolan and J.J. Abrams more than anything, which still makes me express that a different voice behind the camera would have probably propelled this standard toy commercial into something special. Kids will enjoy the movie (which, lets face it, is the true audience here, and it works on that level like the previous films). That is, if they can make it past the boring mostly Transformer-less opening. So much more could have been done with this concept, but at least it wasnt nearly as big of a mess Amazing Spider-Man 2 was. 7 out of 10
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 17:25:47 +0000
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