Transformers The Last Knight

Synopsis: Humans are at war with the Transformers and Optimus Prime is gone. The key to saving the future lies buried in the secrets of the past and the hidden history of Transformers on Earth. Now, it's up to the unlikely alliance of inventor Cade Yeager, Bumblebee, an English lord and an Oxford professor to save the world.

Movie Review: "Transformers the Last Knight" is the 5th and possibly the last one directed by Michael Bay. The good news is that "Transformers the Last Knight" is much better and entertaining than the 4th one but that's not saying that much, because I thought the last one was very badly written. The best feature of this movie is the action sequences. They are better than any other Transformers movie. The action scenes are exhilarating to see as Optimus Prime fights and destroy robots in the final act of the movie. Also, the 3rd act of the movie has to be the most interesting part in the entire film; it was action packed with great visual effects and explosive action set pieces. Mark Wahlberg returns in this film as Cade Yeager, an inventor who helps and fights for the Autobots. Wahlberg is a good lead character and he is charming and charismatic when performing his emotional scenes, with both the human characters and the transformers. And he is physically fit and athletic in his action scenes. What this film suffers from is a well written plot. Unfortunately, this movie feels like Michael Bay is running out of ideas and using the same story elements he used in his previous films, causing the story to be lazy and predictable. The first two acts of the film are slow with boring military subplots and history talk about the Transformers and you wish they can just skip over this and get to the robot versus robot action scenes. Once again, this movie gives us characters that you do not care about; they are so expendable that you don't care if they live or die. Legendary actor Anthony Hopkins plays Sir Edmund Burton, an English lord who helps Cade save the world. Michael Bay wasted an opportunity with Hopkins' character—the mythology story line was boring and failed on every level. The film also suffers from silly sex humor that is not funny and cringe-worthy at times, but there was some humor that worked, especially involving Jerrod Carmichael, who had some funny lines back and forth between Mark Wahlberg's character Cade Yeager and Carmichael's—he definitely had me chuckling in a few of those scenes. And there was a funny scene that involved Bumblebee's voice that was very funny but other than that, the humor failed. The villain this time is Megatron and this character was menacing and scary and a very cool image to watch, but he is only in the film for about 10 minutes, another directing mistake. I have always loved the Transformers since I was a kid. I really wanted to like this movie, but it is filled with bloated subplots, boring characters and crass humor. I think it is time for Michael Bay to step away from the franchise because it needs a fresh reboot. I am giving "Transformers the Last Knight" a 2 out of 5 stars.

Director: : Michael Bay

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Isabela Moner, Josh Duhamel, Laura Haddock, Jerrod Carmichael, Stanley Tucci and Anthony Hopkins

Runtime: 149 Minutes