ransformers 3 Movie Plot:
A race between the Autobots, who have joined the U.S. War on Terror, and the Decepticons, who have been licking their wounds and scheming, to get their hands on a piece of long-lost Cyrbertronian technology that crashed on the dark side of the moon some 50 years ago. Honestly, the less you concern yourself with the machinations of the plot, the happier you will be. Screenwriter Ehren Kruger clearly had some lofty aspirations about saying Something Important about post-Cold War geopolitics, but it gets lost amid all the crashing, exploding and shouting.
Transformers 3 Movie Review:
In the third "Transformers" we learn via Ehren Kruger's screenplay that the NASA space program was a massive cover-up, allowing the crew of Apollo 11, among others, to explore the alien metal ruins on the moon's hidden dark side. We learn also that Shia LaBeouf's screaming intensity knows no human limits.
He acts like a twisted, hyper-caffeinated rageaholic even when he's not confronting the enemy robots on Wacker Drive and environs. He acts this way simply when he's nervous about his new girlfriend, played by Victoria's Secret undies model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, spending time with her boss (Patrick Dempsey), whose office is played by the lovely and talented Santiago Calatrava-designed Milwaukee Art Museum.
The Autobot robots from space, our pals, beat up on the Decepticons pretty hard in the Chicago climax. Rockets and other weapons disfigure various downtown buildings, including the Hotel 71; the tippy-top of the Tribune Tower; and, among others, Marina City, which really will have serious water-tightness issues after so much computer-generated damage. The Wrigley Building gets off with just a scratch, thank God. Trump Tower, conspicuously a part of the plot, fares suspiciously well, considering the phrase "Trump Tower," when spoken aloud on-screen, sounds ripe for imminent ruination.
For Chicagoans, "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" holds a built-in interest level. It won't be the same for moviegoers in New York or LA, where they're used to seeing their respective metropoli roughed up by interstellar tourists with terrible attitudes. Director Michael Bay, master of the known universe when it comes to soul-crushing blockbusters with insidious worldwide appeal, manages a couple of pleasing, borderline-coherent bits.
Notably, there's a scene -- full of queasy visual allusions to the World Trade Center towers and those who didn't make it -- where the nominal humans played by LaBeouf (whose character's personal Autobot bodyguard, Bumblebee, should be agitating for better material by now) and company slide down the glass exterior of a toppling office building. Down, down, down they go, like Leonardo and Kate at the end of "Titanic."
The scene keeps going and going, and if Bay had any sense of honest thrill-making, it'd be honestly thrilling. He doesn't. He's merely relentless, working on your nerves in a purely clinical way, without the levitating touch of the dung poet you find, for example, in a Roland Emmerich film such as "2012."
Transformers 3 Movie Ratings: 4.0/ 5.0
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