For $10, you can go to a store and buy a game like Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots; or you can buy a ticket to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, a movie that throws that same fighting robots concept into a blender along with a couple-hundred million dollars and change. What comes out feels like the cinematic equivalent of a monster-truck rally.
Revenge, one of the most buzzed about films of the summer, is the sequel to the 2007 release, which featured (as you might have guessed) “transforming” robots. A guy behind me in the screening, in fact, said, “I’d better see some transforming going on!”
For you newcomers, the robots are divided into two camps: the Autobots and Decepticons. The former are here to save the earth from the latter, who want to take over this world because they’ve drained the life out of theirs.
Each robot has its own personality, the grandest of which is Optimus Prime, the “Superman” of the bunch (look at me trying to merge geek worlds together). Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf), a college-bound teenager, lands right in the middle of the war and must navigate through a series of challenges to find the secret that the Decepticons are after.
At this point, I’ve no doubt devoted too much space to the story, which really is just an excuse to show off some of the most intense, explosive fight scenes of the summer. The sequences are fast and relentless. When I watched it, the only clue I had that the good guys were winning was the spontaneous clapping in the theater.
Read the rest of the review here.
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