Transformers: Age of Extinction

The Transformers series returns with what just might be the worst entry yet, as director Michael Bay offers up a punishing 165 minute (!) exercise in abject pointlessness – with the movie’s relatively watchable opening hour standing in sharp contrast to a prolonged, padded-out, and thoroughly excruciating second half. The storyline follows Mark Wahlberg’s Cade Yeager as he, his daughter (Nicola Peltz’s Tessa), and her boyfriend (Jack Reynor’s Shane) are drawn into the ongoing battle between Autobots and Decepticons, with the trio’s efforts generally hindered by a sinister government agent (Kelsey Grammer’s Harold Attinger) and a ruthless business executive (Stanley Tucci’s Joshua Joyce). Transformers: Age of Extinction admittedly does get off to a rather passable start, as Bay, along with scripter Ehren Kruger, does a decent job of establishing the central character and his small-town existence – with Wahlberg’s appealing turn certainly going a long way towards cultivating a not-entirely-disastrous atmosphere. It’s worth noting, too, that the action in the movie’s initial stretch is surprisingly palatable, with Bay offering up an early car chase that packs more entertainment value than one might’ve expected. (It helps, of course, that the film’s first half lacks the unintelligible, unpleasant robot-on-robot fights that have come to define this series.) There’s little doubt, then, that Transformers: Age of Extinction‘s shift into a seriously trying piece of work comes at around the halfway mark, as Bay and Kruger, instead of simplifying the narrative, begin flooding the proceedings with one unnecessary subplot after another – with the movie reaching a point at which it could logically conclude and yet continuing on for another interminable hour. The film’s final stretch, which feels endless, is devoted almost entirely to a series of mindless and thoroughly unexciting battle sequences, and it’s ultimately difficult to envision even Bay himself sitting through the movie’s latter half without checking his watch a few times.

* out of ****