"Transformers: Age Of Extinction" is a robots versus robots mash-up movie with a slam-bang action climax, set in Hong Kong. I’m no huge fan of him but schlockmeister Michael Bay, should get the credit for redefining the "action genre" into fight! fight! fight! fight!, genre. To say this movie is full of fights would be mercy-killing. Its actually wrestle mania meet John woo martial arts on overdrive or as some like to say it - "Hong Kong meet the metal grinder encore!"
The casting of these films always thrust on Peter Cullen’s unmistakable voicing act as the central lead "Optimus Prime"; but Bay this time around, have added star Mark Wahlberg and chick, Nicola Peltz, into the mix.
They do share a charming chemistry as dad and daughter but hey! Don’t expect any sort of human drama in a Michael Bay film - not in a billion years. The plot is your typical Transformers coffer. In a dystopian world where robotics intelligence have triggered off anarchy and taken over the administrative onus from humans, two opposing "species of robots", yeah! SPECIES OF ROBTS - Decepticons and Auto-bots - fight it out for existence and survival in "The Age Of Existence".In the wake of darkness uprising, american embassy CIA comes to terms with the deceptions to avoid a war-fare; in return of the ailing, out there in the hiding, autobots. But not until our hero Optimus Prime wakes up in the garage of Cade Yeager, that grease-monkey turned engineer played by Mark Wahlberg, they haven’t seen dawn, yet.He meets his old nemesis in Galvatron aka Megatron, and the action slowly shifts places to Hong Kong, China.
Galvatron is after some sort of seed-bomb that is tipped by everyone to possibly strengthen their hacking prowess and invigorate them; but as always, the onus here lies on the metallic hands of Optimus along with Bumblebee, Cade Yeager, his daughter and a bunch of Dinosaur sized robots, to stop the villainy and prevent utter carnage.
Well, well, well. Forget the pre-text and the sub-text because its all familiar territory for the fans of such material- HEAVEN hath no rage; nor HELL a fury!Hong Kong has always been one of Hollywood’s favored action movie destinations but I don’t think in a canvas like this anything such as that caters to us, except a giant big Hollywood studio and a green background, off course.
Everything blows up from cola bottles to ancient china artifacts to giant edifices and, after witnessing the mayhem on glorious 3D with an all but cheering crowd; I presume there ought to be sprinklers left to dangle on the DOP’s camera as well.Bay is a master of the visuals, there’s no denying that. And neither I dare to deny that in his fourth Transformers adventure, he has indeed set the bars, sky high!The robotics transformation gimmicks goes on & on & on for well over two and a half hours but save for a couple of ill-timed Iron Man pirouette impression and some non-sense plot threads about alien invasion and the terminal of human persistence; the action seldom misses a beat!
I don’t want to give away the ending but there’s one set-piece here, the penultimate one, where Optimus pulls off a Michael Jordan act. No, no, no. I don’t mean a human transformation. But What I mean is the slam dunk made to look like a stylish somersault, kind of a thing!Mark Wahlberg perform his role like fish to water but these series’s guiltiest of pleasures is bereft on having your seat vibrate with the deep, reverberating tones of Peter Cullen’s voice, stemming off from the amplifiers. Even though his facial presence is never felt; his contribution to this franchise could never be under-estimated.
Go for it if what you seek is slam-bang action. Even if you don’t see it on big screen plug it to home-video, and I bet, you would get your money’s worth.I’m going with 3 out of 5 for the fourth Transformers movie, Age of extinction. Michael Bay, does not disappoint. No, he doesn’t.