Transformers Age of Extinction (12A)

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer

Director: Michael Bay

Running time: 165 minutes

BASINGSTOKE'S Sam Rolfe, who lives in Brighton Hill and is 10 years-old, gives his verdict: 

Basingstoke Gazette:

"The film is slightly boring at the start but got much better. It was very funny and action-packed with new Transformers and great old ones like the legendary Optimus Prime and Bumblebee.

The 3D effects are amazing and so were the CG graphics.

I loved seeing it on the Waterloo screen which is the biggest in Europe. You have to visit the IMAX at least once in your life!

Mark Wahlberg’s acting is awesome, and he is one of the best Transformers characters ever.

Jack Reynor was really good and he had a really cool car.

I can’t wait for the next one!"

 

Damon Smith says:

If Michael Bay, director of Transformers: Age Of Extinction, were immortalised on-screen as a "robot in disguise", his mechanised alter-ego might be Maximus Kaboom.

For two decades, the Californian film-maker has been elevating wanton destruction to a blockbusting art form.

In Armageddon, he pitted Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck against a gigantic asteroid on a collision course with earth and orchestrated destruction to the sonic booms of Aerosmith's I Don't Want To Miss A Thing.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor provided Bay with a turbulent backdrop to his 2001 war opus.

Since 2007, he has been ensconced in the Transformers fold, bringing bombast to live-action adventures of the bestselling Hasbro toys.

Basingstoke Gazette:

This fourth instalment is crammed with Bay's usual visual excesses and motifs, including gleaming cars and a pouting female protagonist in hilariously short denim shorts.

Five years have passed since the Battle Of Chicago, which provided the pyrotechnic-laden climax to Transformers: Dark Of The Moon.

The alliance between humans and robots lies in tatters and an elite CIA unit named Cemetery Wind under the control of Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) hunts Transformers without mercy.

On a family ranch, struggling inventor Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) discovers that a rusty truck he has just purchased is battle-scarred Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen).

Agents from Cemetery Wind descend on the homestead and Optimus protects Cade, his daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz), her secret boyfriend Shane (Jack Reynor) and Cade's mechanic sidekick Lucas (TJ Miller) in the ensuing gun fight.

The humans join forces with Optimus to reunite the Autobots - Bumblebee, Crosshairs (John DiMaggio), Drift (Ken Watanabe) and Hound (John Goodman) - and the rebellion plots a swift response to inventor Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci), who has created his own Transformer army led by the mighty Galvatron (Frank Welker).

Basingstoke Gazette:

Transformers: Age Of Extinction opens with Cade and Lucas scouring an abandoned cinema for scrap metal.

"Sequels and remakes - bunch of crap!" growls the grizzled owner as he surveys memorabilia from bygone blockbusters that litter the tumble-down building.

Never has a truer word been spoken in one of Bay's exercises in hyperkinetic style over substance.

Screenwriter Ehren Kruger repeatedly defies logic to contrive outlandish scenarios for pyrotechnics and carnage, including an alien spaceship that sucks up metal then drops magnetically charged cars and boats onto terra firma.

Wahlberg punches and leaps through gaping plot holes, trotting out the concerned father routine as younger members of cast perform gravity-defying gymnastics to emerge from clouds of razor-sharp shrapnel without a graze or smudged lip-gloss.

Action sequences are visual vomit: an incomprehensible spew of glistening metal and explosions that hurt the eyes especially in the large-scale IMAX format.

"The war will be over soon," barks Grammer's Machiavellian politician during a momentary lull.

The buttock-numbing 165-minute running time says otherwise. 

4/10