FILM: Transformers - Dark Of The Moon 3D (dir: Michael Bay, 2011)

"It's total anarchy around here!"

The third Transformers live-action movie is a curious beast: different yet the same, tonally uneven and a wild mixture of greatness and weakness.  As a movie, it is probably overall the most effective of the three, and thankfully a marked improvement on the desperate Revenge Of The Fallen.  Structurally, it follows the pattern established by its predecessors, but the plotting here is careful and deliberate (to the point of laborious at times in the first half) which leads to some good pay-off moments later on.  The attempts at humour still fall flat too often, but the likes of Shia LaBeouf and the wonderful Alan Tudyk manage to find laughs in limp lines.  Indeed, LaBeouf gives another spirited and committed performance, and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley proves to be a more than adequate replacement for Megan Fox in a slightly better-written role.  Solid support from actors of the calibre of Frances McDormand and John Malkovich is a help, Leonard Nimoy voices Sentinel Prime to perfection (although leading to a couple of cringeworthy line references to The Wrath Of Khan) and a host of returning faces are welcome for viewers who have followed the series.  Steve Jablonsky's score is disappointingly anonymous, but sound design is excellent.  Like X-Men: First Class, embedding the story in real historical events (here, the Space Race) gives it strength and makes the conspiracy theory element more valid this time.  As the film develops, the question of where the money was spent begins to raise its head, but where Dark Of The Moon really scores is in the bravura final half-hour, when the epic battle scenes in Chicago are a stunningly impressive special effects tour de force, and the true 3D is mostly beautiful.  Bay manages the action with much better clarity, purpose and impact here than in the last film, and he pulls off one truly jaw-dropping moment in the incredible skyscraper sequence glimpsed in the trailer.  Dark Of The Moon is a curiously uneven slow-burner of a story that builds to a very satisfying finale, one which does wrap up this trilogy effectively should Bay and LaBeouf - as they have already indicated - not return for another outing.