TRANSFORMERS: Revenge of the Fallen
CAST: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, John Turturro, Ramon Rodriguez
DIRECTOR: Michael Bay
Revenge is a dish best served cold, not in cold metal. Yet machines which can transform themselves into gigantic beasts — and that doesn’t include mobiles of any kind, hmmm... — are amazing, spectacular, mindblowing and the works of a mind with a truly strange imagination, but do we really want to watch one set of them take on another while cursing and making wisecracks in true Hollywood tradition? For an energy source. Really?

To be sure, we were forewarned. When the first Transformers came, conquered and spawned yet new toys, we knew what was to follow would be bigger and more ambitious. At two and a half hours, travelling from American mainland to Shanghai and Diego Garcia, the depths of oceans to outer space, and ending up on Egypt’s historical pyramids, which by the way are almost ruined, Revenge of the Fallen involving Decepticons (just in case you forgot who is the bad guy) and Autobots, the US government and another unlikely alliance, certainly doesn’t lack in ambition.

What it also didn’t lack, obviously, was a budget. From conjuring up those machines to having them in battle, to blowing up battleships, planes, tanks, soldiers and pyramids, and of course cars, lots of them, nowhere does director Bay hold back. The most impressive though is a beautiful woman who turns out to have tongue of steel, a very long tongue at a very wrong moment.

... contd.