At the Theater - "Transformers: Age Of Extinction" - (2014) - If bloated, obnoxious and dumber than a sack of hammers is your idea of a perfect summer movie-going experience, then this fourth entry in Director Michael Bay's Transformers franchise is your personal love letter. Potential viewers should expect Bay's trademark penchants for pyrotechnics galore, overly dramatic usages of slow-motion, vehicle fetishism, leggy, vapid beauties (not a complaint), rapid-fire editing, adolescent humor and stilted dialogue- after explosion #938 I began to tune out and periodically check my watch, contemplating my post-movie meal...
There are admittedly some good qualities here: the digitally-rendered Transformers are as sharp and as vibrant as ever, the elaborate sequences of chaos/mayhem are commendably detailed, the set pieces and sound design are impressive, while Mark Wahlberg is a substantial improvement over Shia LaBeouf as the human face of the franchise- he's a far more believable main protagonist/action star and is able to keep matters afloat for substantial portions of the film.
I'm all for good, dumb fun, but the film's two hour and forty-five minute run-time, coupled with a ridiculously overstuffed plot, drowns out the experience about halfway through- one can't help but get the notion that a full third of a future film's plot-line has been violently shoe-horned into this one. Screenwriter Ehren Kruger apparently hammered out the script for this film (his third in the franchise) though it's fairly obvious that Michael Bay's spontaneous ideas and predilection for excess once again mutated the narrative. A number of unintentionally hilarious plot contradictions hint at two story-tellers clearly not on the same page.
This particular story takes place a mere five years after the events depicted in "Transformers: Dark of the Moon"- it appears saving the world just wasn't good enough as Kelsey Grammar's (Television's Frazier) rogue CIA Agent, "Harold Attinger", has teamed up with powerful, otherworldly forces in an effort to hunt down and terminate all Transformers, good and bad, with extreme prejudice. Grammar supplies a solid main villain, while the scenery-chewing Titus Welliver (The Town) portrays his deadly serious field agent, "James Savoy".
Wahlberg's Texas based inventor, "Cade Yeager", marks the films most charismatic and resonant character- staving off financial ruin while struggling to raise his teenaged daughter (a generic Nicola Peltz), the buff gadgeteer (?) stumbles upon a bullet-riddled, rusty and dormant Optimus Prime.
Jack Reynor (Delivery Man) is insufferable as the cocky boyfriend of Cade's daughter- no self-respecting father would put up with his antics and most will find themselves wanting to strangle the bastard in record fashion.
Stanley Tucci (Big Night) provides the most laughs as a corporate inventor with sketchy motives, while the shaggy-haired T.J. Miller (Cloverfield) portrays Cade's surf-boarding business partner- remember, the duo's base of operations is located in Texas...where surfing is notoriously awful.
Li Bingbing (1911), portraying a Chinese industrialist, and Sophia Myles (Underworld), as a globe-hopping geologist, are mere window-dressings- don't expect much depth from any of the female characters here...or in any Bay film, for that matter.
John Goodman (The Big Lebowski) and Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai) make their franchise debut, lending their vocal talents to the Autobots, "Hound" (Oshkosh Defense Medium Tactical Vehicle) and "Drift" (2013 Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse), respectively. I could have sworn that Ray Winstone supplied the voice of the green, trench coated "Crosshairs" (2014 Chevrolet Corvette C7 Stingray), though I was mistaken- turns out it was voice artist John DiMaggio.
The intergalactic bounty hunter "Lockdown" (voiced by Mark Ryan) would mark my second favorite Transformer design in this franchise, behind "Shockwave's" super-cool aesthetic in 2011's Dark Of The Moon.
Fan favorite "Bumblebee" (modified '67 Camaro and a 2014 Chevrolet Camaro concept) is once again present while a few Dinobots make a final act appearance- you just haven't lived until you've witnessed Optimus Prime riding "Grimlock's" mechanized Tyrannosaurus Rex bareback and charging into battle.
A couple of issues to consider:
1. Optimus Prime can apparently fly here, so why would he task our merry band of humans with toting around a highly coveted weapon of mass destruction (while being chased by a myriad of villains) through the streets and across the rooftops of Beijing? As he's capable, why not hoist the deadly MacGuffin into space?
2. Nasty, human-engineered Transformers have the ability to rapidly morph in a molecular, airborne fashion, without the pesky hindrance of gravity- why would these baddies waste their time climbing a skyscraper to reach a group of targeted humans? Why not morph into floating particle mode to overtake them in an exponentially faster manner?
It's commendable that Bay dropped his affinity for Linkin Park, utilizing Imagine Dragons' "Battle Cry" throughout- that said, shouldn't a soundtrack laden with AC/DC tunes be a more natural fit given the subject matter?
The action is damned-near non-stop and is filmed well, though Bay's still woefully inadequate when faced with tonal shifts- he simply cannot grasp the art of subtlety and is seemingly growing less and less concerned with narrative coherency. Transformers: Age Of Extinction is a sprawling, mindless, cheesy spectacle that should please teenaged boys with attention span issues- I'm not so sure it's made for any other demographic...
6.0 out of 10
Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammar, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Titus Welliver, Sophia Myles, Bingbing Li, and T.J. Miller
Vocal Talent: Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, John Goodman, Ken Watanabe, Robert Foxworth, John DiMaggio, Mark Ryan and Reno Wilson
Run-Time: 165 minutes
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, language and brief innuendo
For what it's worth: How I've felt about the previous Transformer films-
Transformers (2007) - 8.0
Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen (2009) - 4.0
Transformers: Dark Of The Moon (2011) - 6.5
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