Film delivers more of the same, writes Leni Ma'ia'i.
Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Kelsey Grammer, Li Bingbing, Sophia Myles, Titus Welliver, T.J. Miller, Melanie Specht, Victoria Summer
Rating: (M)
2 stars out of 5
With an entirely new cast at his disposal, director Michael Bay looked to be injecting new life into an ageing franchise. Unfortunately, Transformers: Age of Extinction (Rialto) was more of the same, with another hour's worth of explosions.
Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) is an inventor chasing the next big thing, but not making any money doing it. He finds an old truck that he plans to use as scrap metal, which turns out to be leader of the Autobots Optimus Prime, whom he befriends.
In the meantime, billionaire Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci) is manufacturing his own breed of transformers to try to revolutionise modern warfare.
Naturally, this all goes awry and Yeager and the Autobots have to save Earth from impending doom.
What begins as a solid story with some entertaining dialogue, quickly descends into chaos. When I say chaos, I'm not just referring to the action scenes, of which there were a lot. I refer to the plot, which lost its coherency about an hour in.
Lovers of action movies will find their cravings more than satisfied. The explosions are massive and the battles epic. However, the fourth instalment seemed to be nothing more than a commercial stunt. Almost every scene involved not-so-subtle product placement and the pyrotechnics took the place of any real storyline.
Best thing: Yeager's relationship with his charming best friend Lucas (T.J. Miller).
Worst thing: A scene I'm sure was a beer commercial that finishes with Yeager popping open a bottle on a ruined car. In the middle of a battle.
See it with: A lot of time on your hands, and a passion for explosions.
