Oh John Turturro...

Transformers(dir. Michael Bay)
This movie suprisingly had very little action. How most people describe it makes it seem like it is a non-stop action romp similar to something like Live Free or Die Hard which probably works against the film more than helps it. I guess it would create interest in people who are expecting a mindless action movie, but those people will probably be disappointed because it only delivers on the mindless part. Most of the characters are bland and when the action finally happens, you have pretty much no emotional involvement to what's happening on screen, which makes the action not thrilling or exciting since you don't really care if anybody dies. The transformers' personalities are underdeveloped, but not nearly as underdeveloped as the humans, which is kind of funny because the movie spends most of the running time with them. The only characters that seem interesting are of the over the top variety like Bernie Mac's and John Turturro's. Some critics say the film is racist because it displays most of the black characters as crazy lunatics, but in all honesty, I would rather have characters of my race crazy than totally uninteresting. When the battle occurs at the end, you don't really have any idea what is going. You can't really tell which robot is on which side because it spends very little time on trying to make them distinct from each other especially the Decepticons. It is unclear, but it's definately more interesting than the parts preceding it and makes you wonder why the whole film couldn't have been one huge robot on robot battle since the film doesn't really get you emotionally involved with the characters to make the time spent before the battle seem valuable. If you're going to see an action movie, see Live Free or Die Hard. The action is interesting just because it's so over the top in an almost tongue in cheek way, that makes it entertaining and John McClane easily has more personality than all the characters in this. Roll out!
** out of ****