12A • 150 mins • 19 June

Director: Michael Bay

Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, John Turturro, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, Ramon Rodriguez, Rainn Wilson, Isabel Lucas

Rating:

For years Michael Bay’s been aspiring to take cinema to a place where action is punctuated as rarely as possible by those pesky talky bits. With his big, loud and slightly nonsensical Transformers sequel he’s taken his quest to its logical conclusion. This is effectively one big, two-and-a-half-hour-long set-piece.

From a Shanghai-based mash-up that out-bangs the first movie’s finale, through to a robot rumble in tourist-friendly sight of the pyramids of Giza, there’s barely time to catch your breath, let alone think. This film is so eager to give your senses a pummelling that come the end, your mind is completely anaesthetised to the outside world.

The story is something of an afterthought, which is a shame, considering that, for all its crazy excess, the first Transformers did at least have a clear beginning, middle and end. Here the plot doesn’t so much unfold as materialise from the ether. New robot characters appear from nowhere, key plot points slip in and out of the movie on a whim – you’re often left thinking “so what happened to [insert relevant item]?”– and inescapable situations are frequently resolved by revealing a convenient new piece of Transformer technology.

In the tradition of blockbuster sequels, the bywords here are “bigger, faster, more intense”. It’s now three years since the events of the original movie, and Optimus Prime and his Autobot buddies – their ranks now swelled by a few new robots in disguise – are working with the US government to track down and eliminate rogue Decepticons. Unfortunately for Prime and co, Megatron’s lackeys are working overtime to prepare for the return of the Fallen, an ancient robot Lucifer who’s like the Emperor to Megatron’s Darth Vader (contrary to reports, Megatron is in the movie, his watery grave revealed to the Decepticons by a piece of expositionary dialogue so shameless that all involved should have been sent back to film school).

As you’d expect, the robots look fantastic. ILM’s effects have moved on even since their groundbreaking work on the first movie, and their giant shapeshifting machines are so integrated with the real world that you feel Michael Bay just picked up a camera and shot them. Even so, you can’t help feeling that less could have been more. Aside from the colourful Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and newbie Autobot comic relief/annoyances The Twins, there are so many identikit, silvery Transformers that they blur into one, many of them glimpsed so fleetingly – a couple die in the opening salvo – that their only reason for existence is as an excuse to sell toys. Had Bay cut the roll call back a bit, they might have been characters rather than flag-bearers for CGI. The one Bot to emerge with personality intact is curmudgeonly geriatric Decepticon turncoat Jetfire, a creaky British-accented misanthrope whose utterance of the word “bollocks” is almost worth the admission by itself.

However, Bay’s no longer just about machines. These days he has a new fixation in the shapely form of Megan Fox. The first movie’s infamous car repair scene opened some major floodgates, and now the director never misses an opportunity to get his starlet du jour running in slow motion, pouting at the camera or provocatively removing bits of clothing. You’re looking at the fine line where modelling meets acting.

If Megan Fox’s attributes are used to the max – she’s so alluring that even robots try humping her leg – her co-star/love interest Shia LaBeouf is somewhat wasted. Made miserable, Luke Skywalker-style, by the weight of the world on his shoulders, Sam Witwicky’s fast-talking wit doesn’t appear much beyond the first act. Instead, the lion’s share of the comedy falls to John Turturro’s bitter ex-government agent and Sam’s irritating new college roommate Leo (The Wire’s Ramon Rodriguez).

Like the movie as a whole, the results are inconsistent. By turns Revenge Of The Fallen is spectacular, funny, cringeworthy, edge-of-the-seat exciting, tedious, incomprehensible, dumb and very occasionally smart – sometimes all at the same time. Unfortunately, there isn’t room for everything Bay wants to do in 150 minutes, leaving you wondering why he couldn’t have saved something for a part three. It’s not like any force in the world, robot or human, is going to stop it from happening.

Richard Edwards