2.5 out of 5 stars
Family appropriateness rating: 3 out of 5 stars
-Action violence throughout, mostly between robots.
-A man is shown falling to his death
-Mild gore from a large gun wound in a dead man's chest
-Moderate amount of language including one censored f-word and one uncensored.
-One or two instances of sexual innuendo that would go over kids' heads.
With an interesting concept about government conspiracy, "Transformers: Age of Extinction" has so much potential to be really good, but it falls short.
Following the near-destruction of Chicago during "Dark of the Moon," both Autobots and Decepticons are in trouble. They are being hunted down and eliminated by American black ops forces.
Many are in hiding, including Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen), who is disguised as a junky, old semi. He is found by Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg), an inventor in Texas who is struggling financially. After finding out that what he brought home is a Transformer, he does what he can to fix it. The CIA gets word of this, and the black ops team goes to Yeager's house to take Optimus Prime away.
This sets off a chain of events that leads Cade, his daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz) and her boyfriend Shayne (Jack Reynor) to help Optimus Prime find out what is going on. It turns out there are some corrupt people behind the hunt for Transformers. They have their own motivations, but they do everything in the name of the country's security.
I like this aspect because it is perfectly relevant to certain events that have come about recently. It has been revealed over the last few years that the National Security Agency has had access to personal information of law-abiding citizens. Government officials insist that it is for he safety of everyone, but there is a lot of discussion as to whether or not that is the full truth.
This aspect is carried out by the two antagonists: Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci) and the Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer). Joyce is an entrepreneur and perfectionist who does not understand the power he is dealing with. Attinger is a cold, threatening man who leads the CIA. Both performances are the best part of the film. They are strong actors who are able to make their characters interesting to watch.
The government conspiracy angle is only discussed a little bit. Once the plot picks up, the focus goes to robots fighting, people running and a ridiculous amount of things blowing up in ridiculously huge explosions. There is nothing wrong with action in films, but sometimes it becomes the entire movie, and that is not how it should be.
Director Michael Bay could have redeemed this by trimming it down quite a bit. The run time is two hours and 45 minutes. Most of it is either action or a superfluous plot point. There are entire sections that could have been cut out, and the movie would have been much better.
As it stands, it is difficult to care about what is going on after about one and a half hours. At about that point, my mind started wandering, wishing the film would wrap up so I can go on with my day. A good movie should not do that. If the director decides to make it very lengthy, there better be a lot of depth and character development. That is not how this movie is.
For the most part, the characters are just there to drive the action along. There was potential for some good development. The beginning sets up the father-daughter relationship well enough to create a very intense moment in which Cade fears for Tessa's life. After that, however, little is done with the protagonists.
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