The action is relentless and you best not have vertigo as the overuse of drone footage will turn your stomach into knots. There is also an almost complete lack of believability in the reality of what takes place on the screen. Criminal laws are broken by the characters and physics laws by the director.

The action is set during a Los Angeles bank robbery gone wrong. This leads to a chase scene that lasts 90% of the film’s running time. Its outrageousness brings to mind OJ and his Bronco and they end up trashing almost as many cars as John Landis did in the Blues Brothers.

Bay pulls out all the stops with a mindset of relentless activity and once you pack away your sense of disbelief you can have a good time. Jake Gyllenhaal gets to overact in every scene, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II gets to be the sensitive one and Eiza González gets to satisfy the Megan Fox factor. It’s all never less than big, dumb, and fun of fun.

Rob Hudson
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In this breakneck thriller from director-producer Michael Bay, decorated veteran Will Sharp (Emmy winner Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Candyman, The Matrix Resurrections), desperate for money to cover his wife’s medical bills, asks for help from the one person he knows he shouldn’t—his adoptive brother Danny (Oscar® nominee Jake Gyllenhaal, Zodiac, Spider-Man: Far From Home). A charismatic career criminal, Danny instead offers him a score: the biggest bank heist in Los Angeles history: $32 million. With his wife’s survival on the line, Will can’t say no.

But when their getaway goes spectacularly wrong, the desperate brothers hijack an ambulance with a wounded cop clinging to life and ace EMT Cam Thompson (Eiza González, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, Baby Driver) onboard. In a high-speed pursuit that never stops, Will and Danny must evade a massive, city-wide law enforcement response, keep their hostages alive, and somehow try not to kill each other, all while executing the most insane escape L.A. has ever seen.

Ambulance will be released in Australian cinemas February 17, 2022!

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Humans and Transformers are at war, Optimus Prime is gone. The key to saving our future lies buried in the secrets of the past, in the hidden history of Transformers on Earth. Saving our world falls upon the shoulders of an unlikely alliance: Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg); Bumblebee; an English Lord (Sir Anthony Hopkins); and an Oxford Professor (Laura Haddock).

There comes a moment in everyone’s life when we are called upon to make a difference. In Transformers: The Last Knight, the hunted will become heroes. Heroes will become villains. Only one world will survive: theirs, or ours.

MICHAEL BAY WRITES A LETTER TO TRANSFORMERS FANS.
I’ve been living in this franchise for over 10 years now. For Transformers: The Last Knight, we put together a writers’ room designed to greatly expand our mythology, integrating our films in a whole new way. Every movie will interlink.

It was a huge task to expand mythology from the beginning of the world throughout history. We had a great team of writers: Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind); Art Marcum & Matt Holloway (Iron Man); Ken Nolan (Black Hawk Down); Zak Penn (Ready Player One); Lindsey Beer (Barbie); Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Tomb Raider); Christina Hodson (Bumblebee); Steven DeKnight (Daredevil, Smallville); Jeff Pinkner (The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Lost); and Andrew Barrer & Gabriel Ferrari (Ant-Man).

Through the summer of 2015, they worked in a huge space on the Paramount lot, surrounded by over 10,000 concept images from the franchise’s history: the movies, cartoons, and comic books. They had a life-size Bumblebee, a Megatron head, and many other props staring them down. We pulled from everything. It was a fan’s dream room.We brought in Transformers historians from Hasbro to educate them on where Transformers has been – so that they could figure out where it can go.

I can safely say that there’s never been a Transformers film with the huge visual scope and expansive mythology as this movie, The Last Knight.

It’s bittersweet for me. With every Transformers film, I’ve said it would be my last. I see the 120 million fans around the world who see these movies, the huge theme park lines to the ride and the amazing Make- A-Wish kids who visit my sets, and it somehow keeps drawing me back. I love doing these movies. This film was especially fun to shoot. But, this time might really be it. So I’m blowing this one out.It’s a final chapter and a new beginning.

There comes a moment in everyone’s life when we are called upon to make a difference.

In Transformers: The Last Knight, the hunted will become heroes. Heroes will become villains. Only one world will survive: theirs, or ours.
-Michael Bay.

Well, lots could go wrong and a lot does. The film is an exercise in groan-inducing predictability right up to the casting of Megan Fox as April O’Neil and its clear influences from Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins to Bay’s own Transformer films.

Formally the ‘director’ is Jonathan Liebesman (Wrath of the Titans, Battle Los Angeles), Bay is credited as ‘producer’ but his fingerprints are all over it. This includes his usual teenage adolescent farts and giggles humour, banal dialogue and a wall to wall soundtrack assault which threatens to bow the silver screen out sideways. The cacophony is initially overwhelming but quickly becomes underwhelming as your eyes glaze over and your ears deafen.

With this latest TMNT flick, Bay has presented us with mostly repulsive heroes that are grubby, ugly, tough-talking, muscle-bound smartarses imbued with gangsta attitudes that are very unappealing indeed. Splinter is equally unappealing with his craggy features and raggy facial hair. Given that the rodent sensei learned all he knew about martial arts from a ninja picture book, it’s no surprise that our heroes in half shells get their tails so easily kicked by a highly upgraded, transformertised Shredder who really does know his Kung Fu. This furthermore makes the turtles’ eventual victory over their nemesis (as they must, of course) all the more unbelievable.

There is quite an exciting chase sequence, however, down a snow-covered mountain in a semi-trailer but beyond this, there is little to commend the film. Teenage Mutant Gangsta Turtles is big, dumb but barely fun and is the height of peurile Michael Bay tosh. Sadly, the sequel is already in pre-production.

Stuart Jamieson
www.teenagemutantninjaturtlesmovie.com.au