Review: Transformers: Dark of the Moon

The script is awkward and there's some idiotic plotting, but Transformers: Dark of the Moon still presents some of the most incredible blockbuster action you’ll see all year.

For those whose brain wasn’t liquidised by the Revenge of the Fallen – an amalgamation of very loud sound effects, jarring FX and racist robots – Michael Bay has this week unleashed a third, and perhaps final, outing of his morphing alien robotic “bayhem” in Transformers 3 (silly subtitle: Dark Of The Moon).

Words like ‘subtlety’ and ‘coherence’ aren’t in Bay's vocabulary. Two years ago the risible Revenge of the Fallen grossed a massive $840m at the box office, which might’ve suggested that its audience is as lobotomised as the filmmakers.

The good news, though, is that while this second sequel doesn’t match the cheesy escapist fun of the original, T3 goes a long way towards repairing the flaws of its predecessor .

Autobots are now living within the human populace of Earth, protecting the innocent folk from all things bad. But when the Decepticons regroup, out-of-his-luck Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) & Co must band together one last time to prevent a full-scale invasion of Earth and annihilation of the human race.

Like the first two movies, the story is mostly nonsense, with plot threads involving moon landing conspiracies and a twist in which Decepticons caused the Chernobyl disaster. The robot characters are more layered than the humans.

In the opening hour we’re subjected to a horrible soundtrack, cardboard cutout characters (do we really need Sam’s parents to pop up again for no comic effect whatsoever?) and Shia spending his time moaning about not having a job and his cravings of saving the world.

There are a few distractions, though. John Malkovich appears as an egocentric megalomaniac who injects a wry humour into proceedings and Alan Tudyk, as bodyguard Dutch, steals the show with some terrific comic timing.

Unfortunately, scriptwriter Ehren Kruger (who tackled a threequel before with Scream 3) can’t help himself and thinks bringing in Ken Jeong to play the same character from The Hangover is a good thing. Mercifully, he quickly exits in a gloriously satisfying death scene.

Oscar winner Frances McDormand (Fargo, Burn After Reading) must’ve received an impressive paycheck as she happily chews the scenery while Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson prove they’re all brawn and no brain when it comes to their acting. Shia LaBeouf is always watchable but here, he spends so much time either whining or screeching that he’s not really the hero we want to invest our time in.

And yet, those performances are tolerable when it’s compared to the abilities of Victoria Secret model and Jason Statham’s latest squeeze, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, as Sam’s new girlfriend, Carly. On the other hand, she makes Megan Fox look like Meryl Streep, and Bay is smart enough (or cheeky enough) to allow the camera to indulge in her barely-covered rear on multiple occasions.

At the end of it all, it's up to the robots to steal the show, and boy, do they steal the show. Whereas Revenge of the Fallen’s action quota was far too excessive and confusing to be coherent, this is an easier alien-invasion template to work with and he uses the 3D technology to its full advantage.

Setpieces involving soldiers skydiving from colliding aircrafts into a decimated Chicago, and Soundwave (the coolest Decepticon yet) toppling a skyscraper will go down as some of the most incredible blockbuster action you’ll see all year. In fact, this is the best combination of 3D and FX since Avatar.

Mr Bay knows that it’s the robots that are the money spinners here, and even allows for a fantastic three-way smackdown between Optimus Prime, Sentinel and Megatron that will surely have fan-boys salivating at the mouth.

While expectations for this third installment were low, Transformers: Dark Of The Moon is far from the mess you might fear. It's an awkward script with some idiotic plotting, a hint of xenophobia and some of the most blatant American military propaganda you’ll ever see but when it comes to some superior big-budget action, it raises the bar into the area that justifies the admission price alone.

Who would’ve thought that Michael Bay could save a film and not sink it?

- Mark Kinsella

Transformers: Dark Of The Moon is in cinemas now.