Review #1,251: 'Transformers: The Last Knight' (2017)

A few years ago, after the Shia LaBeouf-starring Transformers trilogy came to a close with Dark of the Moon, Michael Bay made the welcome announcement that he was to leave the franchise he'd been working on day-in day-out for the past 5 years, causing critics - and film buffs forcing themselves to endure such cinematic waste - to rejoice in the process. This, of course, wasn't true, as he came back to the series to helm Age of Extinction in 2014, this time starring the considerably buffer frame of Mark Wahlberg. I don't remember much of what happened - other than incoherent special effects bashing each other and blowing things up - but there was certainly no extinction, and whatever happened in that film inspired Bay to explore new stories in the Transformers universe. And so here we are with number five - The Last Knight.

He's tricked us before into believing that we were finally moving into a world free of Bay's Transformers movies, so there's no reason to believe his new claims that The Last Knight will indeed be his last foray into the stories of the Autobots and Decepticons (although its always been much more about the humans). There's a Bumblebee spin-off starring Hailee Steinfeld already shooting, and the climax here certainly leads us to believe that there's even more to come. The Last Knight runs at a whopping 149 minutes (which is actually one of the shortest in the series), and every one of those minutes feels like a lifetime as Bay amps up everything the majority of people have come to hate about the franchise. Huge planets are smashed into each other, characters share awkward and painfully unfunny banter, and the camera leers so much at the franchise's latest hotty (a professor who dresses like a stripper played by Laura Haddock) that you almost long for the acting talents of Megan Fox.

Wahlberg returns as Cade Yeager, the inventor-turned-outlaw who still hasn't realised how ridiculous his name is, and now sports an equally ridiculous haircut. Following the events of the previous film, all Transformers have now been declared criminals, and the Transformer Reaction Force has been set up to eradicate the alien robots. Only more are arriving on Earth every day, so Optimus Prime has travelled back to his home planet to confront his maker for answers. Yeager is protecting many of the surviving Autobots at his junk yard, but soon finds himself caught up in events when a strange alien talisman attaches itself to his arm from the ship of a dead Transformer. Giant horns have emerged from the ground in various locations throughout the world, and it all somehow ties into a tale going back to the time of King Arthur and Merlin (the latter played by a game Stanley Tucci). Decepticons want the talisman for some reason, and by this time I'd given up.

The first hour is spent trying to explain the plot to the audience, while the rest is spent exploring aimless sub-plots, one involving a tough orphan child living in the ruins of a previous battle, designed to appeal to the young crowd. Within the first twenty minutes, it shamelessly rips-off Game of Thrones and Stranger Things, TV shows of a quality Bay could only dream of creating. By the time Anthony Hopkins shows up to collect his pay cheque, you'll be too worn out to tolerate his bumbling, exposition-tool shtick. Bay isn't interested in correcting the mistakes he has been criticised for in the past: The Last Knight is custom-made to appease the audience who willingly pay to see this migraine-inducing nonsense every couple of years. Yet judging for the film's rather uninspiring box-office take, even they are getting tired of it. With the exception of 2007's sporadically enjoyable first film, this franchise has left me angry, outraged, depressed and physically sick, but never had I felt indifferent. The Last Knight left me feeling nothing at all, other than incredibly sleepy.


Directed by: Michael Bay
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Duhamel, Laura Haddock, Isabela Moner, Stanley Tucci
Country: China/Canada/USA

Rating: *

Tom Gillespie

Review #914: 'Pain & Gain' (2013)

The last few years have been somewhat kind to the cinema meat-head. Channing Tatum has found his niche bringing sweetness and humanity to the square-jawed jock with roles in 21 Jump Street (2012) and Foxcatcher (2014), and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Don Jon managing to find a heart beneath it's slick-haired, vest-wearing and gym-obsessed protagonist. Pain & Gain attempts to take a satirical swipe at the type of people who take pictures of themselves after a workout session and plaster their achievements all over social media, as three idiotic and steroid-pumped opportunists decide to take what they feel is owed to them in life. It claims to be based on a shocking true story, although the plot takes extreme liberties with the real-life events.

Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) is sculptured to perfection. He works at the gym where he feels he can help give anybody the body they want, and has helped his boss John Mese (Rob Corddry) turn the place around with a few smart business decisions. But his efforts have not given him the lifestyle he wants - a grand mansion, a top-of-the-range sports car, babes hanging off his massive arms, and every other materialistic pleasure life has to offer. He begins to lust after the kind of life lived by Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub), and so hatches a plan to extort the man for every penny he has after being inspired by motivational speaker Jonny Wu (Ken Jeong).

Along with the steroid-addled and impotency-stricken Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie), Daniel recruits enormous ex-convict and cocaine addict Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson) to assist him in kidnapping and torturing Kershaw until he signs over all of his assets to them. The plan works, but they fail to kill Kershaw after attempting to run him over numerous times. However, nobody believes his story of three imbeciles pulling off such a crime, choosing instead to believe it to be the result of dodgy dealings with criminal organisations. So Daniel, Paul and Adrian are allowed to live the lifestyle they have fantasised about, until they decide it isn't enough and plan to shake down smut peddler Frank Griga (Michael Rispoli), while Kershaw hires private investigator Ed DuBois (Ed Harris) to help him take back his property.

It's quite a change of genre for director Michael Bay, who has spent the last few years making billions at the box-office with huge explosions and CGI robots. While Pain & Gain does demonstrate a previously unseen knack for black comedy, Bay does not possess the necessary skills to tell a story of murder and greed with the required intelligence or satire. When we should be laughing at these preening narcissists, Bay films them with his usual sickly sheen as if to admire them, obscuring the point the film is, I think, trying to make. The decision to play the film mainly for laughs is also in somewhat bad taste. While watching a coked-up Johnson remove a victim's fingerprints by grilling their dismembered hands on a barbecue is the stuff of black comedy gold, you have to remember that there were real victims in this story, and it all happened quite recently.

The main positive is that the performances are all spot-on. Wahlberg is perfect as a man who values his self-worth by his possessions, and Johnson restrains himself enough in a role that could have spilled over into complete farce. A lot of the film is in fact farcical, and not in a good way. Bay insists of filling the screen with fancy wide-angled shots and outdated screen text, when a little dose of subtlety would have worked better. Yet despite its flaws and a bloated sub-plot involving Doorbal's relationship with the doctor who is injecting his penis with the necessary drugs to make it work properly (Rebel Wilson), Pain & Gain is pretty entertaining, and amusing enough to hope that Bay may think about taking a different direction to his usual blockbuster drivel (although he did make the appalling Transformers: Age of Extinction after this).


Directed by: Michael Bay
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Tony Shalhoub, Ed Harris, Rob Corddry, Bar Paly, Rebel Wilson
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #795: 'Transformers: Age of Extinction' (2014)

For those (surely) few concerned at the film title's hint that this may spell the end of the giant, indistinguishable CGI aliens, then rest assured, the perplexing box-office takings and the recent announcement of a fifth instalment means that there's no end in sight for Michael Bay's soulless, money-churning franchise. For those tired of the sickly, shaky-cam photography, annoying, goofy humour, tactless pandering to it's undemanding audience, and endless scenes of computer effects bashing against one another, this spells disaster. Though Age of Extinction marks a slightly more focused improvement over it's two predecessors, Bay is showing no signs of wanting to create a decent movie.

Essentially a re-boot due to a complete cast overhaul (minus the robots), this fourth instalment offers little in terms of refreshment. Our human hero is now Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg), replacing Shia LaBeouf's Sam Witwicky, but sharing all the personality traits. Yeager is a genius mechanic, turning junk into something useful, though nothing financially successful, as his hot-pants-donning jailbait daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz) repeatedly points out. He is essentially the same nerdy, fast-talking every-man as Sam, only he has arms like tree trunks. His discovery of a beaten-down old trunk in a crumbling movie theatre (perhaps a nod to Bay's hand in the disappearance of the local independent cinema) kicks off a series of events which soon attract the attention of corporate-type CIA agent Attinger (Kelsey Grammer).

Of course, the truck is Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), and it turns out that the government are hunting down transformers - even the good guys who helped in the previous film's battle in Chicago. A shady company, headed by Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci - the only actor appearing to have a pulse), is also involved, using 'science' to extract data from the head of Megatron and extracting a new, codeable metal - laughably dubbed 'Transformium'. Anything can be created from the substance, and is being used to develop the company's very own transformers, including Galvatron, who fans of the comic will know to be an absolute beast. When he is unleashed, it becomes apparent that Galvatron has plans of his own. Also in the mix is ancient transformer bounty hunter Lockdown (Mary Ryan), who intends on taking Optimus back to the 'creator'.

It's a hell of a lot of plot, and at 165 minutes, this will test the endurance of even the most hard-core fan of the new movie franchise. Bay clearly hasn't learned anything from the critics. Age of Extinction is the same convoluted splurge as the film's that came before. This time at least, thanks to the vocal talents of John Goodman and Ken Watanabe, the robots can at least be identified amidst the carnage. Without Megan Fox or Rosie Huntington-Whitely to letch over, Bay has employed another useless female character in Peltz, who runs away from explosions in short-shorts and high heels, and has an equally dull boyfriend in Shane (Jack Reynor - whose Irish accent somehow sounds fake even though his IMDb page lists him as having lived in Ireland most of his life). They've been sleeping together for ages so, y'know, the whole sex with a minor thing is cool.

Many critics have dubbed this as the worst yet, but I disagree. Although I detest the use of CGI as a narrative tool, the special effects here are some of the greatest work ever put on film. There's also no outright racist characters, such as the Twins from Revenge of the Fallen (2009), and the whole experience is far less cringe-worthy than it's predecessor's in terms of attempted comedy. But with the film failing to inject any development or evolution into the series, the point of these movies points to just one thing - money. Bay is filling his pockets without a shred of artistic integrity, and as long as audiences keep offering their money for sheer mediocrity, these movies will keep popping up every couple of years.


Directed by: Michael Bay
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Titus Welliver
Country: USA/China

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #228: 'Transformers: Dark of the Moon' (2011)

Big, loud, with various incomprehensible objects gesticulating in front of the screen; must be a Michael Bay film. The first Transformers (2007) film surprised me. A film based on childhood toys, and their 20 minute narrative adverts, about robots that can change into vehicles and other such objects, should not have worked. And to boot, directed by a well known pyrotechnics obsessive, and general hack of bullshit. But the first film had a certain charm, which was elevated by the Shia LeBeouf performance, which pretty much catapulted him, and encouraged Steven Spielberg (also executive producer of all the films) to take him as a new toy. After the debacle of the second in the series, 2009's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the fans and general audience wanted a Tranformers film that was as thrilling, funny, and silly as the first. Well, the idea is quite neat.

Turns out that the 1969 moon landing was not carried out just cause we could. No, it happens that there was something "alien" on the dark side of said moon. So Buzz Aldrin et al had the top secret mission of taking a peek at the craft that crash landed. And that craft was, of course, one that was occupied by some dead Autobots. Back to the present day and Sam Whitwicky (LeBeouf) has been shunned by the government that works with the Decepticons, and has to get a regular job. As Megan Fox was essentially sacked from the franchise for suggesting that Bay was like Hitler, we are led to believe that Sam has got himself a new stunner of a girlfriend (as Sam's mum states in a later scene, he must have a big cock!). So we are introduced to Carley (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley's lips on legs), in a simple, tracking shot that follows her legs and arse: nice! She has a nice body, but her face is dominated by over-sized lips, and is about as charismatic as a transformer that can't transform: i.e. a van.

What transpires is a series of battles, instigated by some objects that have the potential of bringing the robot world through space and time to occupy planet Earth. Humans have been working with the Decepticons for years, which has helped them get information from various companies. When this action begins, the main setting is Chicago. An alien invasion-style visual style takes over, many scenes looking very similar to 2005's War of the Worlds.

The film does have some effective action sequences, but doesn't really deliver anything different that the previous sequel. Basically, it's rubbish. What always amazes me about these kind of films, is that we have developed our English language, that apparently also developed in a civilisation of robots, that existed in parallel in a distant galaxy. Well done Mr Bay, you have released yet another film littered with CGI spunk stains. Plus, the toy company, Hasbro, has a new film to sell their new line of transformers toys!! I have discovered recently that the new toys are not easy to transform, not like the ease of their 80's counterparts.


Directed by: Michael Bay
Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, John Turturro, Tyrese Gibson, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Patrick Dempsey, Frances McDormand, Kevin Dunn, John Malkovich
Country: USA

Rating: **

Marc Ivamy