Michael Bay isn’t a film director. He’s a demolition expert, and a damn good one at that.

So much destruction explodes across Age of Extinction, in fact, that it appears to have shellshocked any semblance of a story. The plot is woozy at best; fading in and out, like consciousness.

With this latest instalment clocking in at 165 excruciatingly excessive minutes (which you will feel every last second of), Transformers continues to be the Caligula of blockbuster franchises.

Teams of robots. Armies of humans. Mark Wahlberg. Age of Extinction has 99 characters but you won’t care about one.

For all its talk of breathing fresh air into the franchise, Age of Extinction clings to the Transformers’ formula like a limpet. Too many minutes, too many characters, not enough story. The VFX, however, are a triumph. 

RATING: 2/5

INFORMATION

CAST: Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammar, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, Mark Ryan, John Goodman

DIRECTOR: Michael Bay

WRITER: Ehren Kruger 

SYNOPSIS: An automobile mechanic and his daughter make a discovery that brings down the Autobots – and a paranoid government official – on them.