Transformers : Revenge of the Fallen... a preview

Its was early October 2008 when i first heard that there's gonna be a sequel to the most astonishing movie i have ever seen, "The Transformers" .(Read my preview on that). From that day on I was diligently searching in the net for images and stories about this sequel. So when the moment finally came to watch the movie, one can understand the spasmic excitement that i was going through.

Ok.. forget about the melodrama intro above and get cracking. How was the movie..? Ohhh I wish they never made this sequel..( I wanted to love this movie as much as you guys want to) but there was a dejavu feeling all round. In the first one ..the sheer magic of CGI and the histronic ability of Michael Bay, turned the whole thing into a memorable affair. But this new product.. gives nothing new. No.. not that we expect megatron and optimus prime run around a tree and sing songs like Hindi movies, it never go any where from the previous attempt.

After a while you get a feeling the actions are strecthed from the older movie and that the robots are not a convincing addition. its just like a new porch to an old house. The faulty aircond and the hot action beside me, by a young couple (how could they; in a warm cinema hall) didn't help the situation either.

After the movie ended, i walked to my car with my head hanging low, wondering what went wrong with the movie. i cant say it for definite..but something was not really right with. Watch for yourself..and tell me if I am correct.

In the last film, the Bot-Con battle was over "the cube," a metallic and encryption-based thing (excuse the technical jargon) called the All Spark that held great power and pixilated from big to small in some very cool ways. This time, the thing at the center of the conflict is "the matrix," which could lead you to think some of the hard edges of Cybertron's fighting forces might morph into smooth silvery sinews, but no such luck.

If anything, Bay, never one to bother with nuance, has packed even more wing nuts and wheels, rods and bolts, pressure plates and pilot bearings into these visually complex beings. Despite the millions it must take to construct them (even in CGI), they still have a junkyard, found-object look that has long entranced boys, filling toy boxes and Hasbro's bank accounts for years.

Though Sam's trying desperately to fade into the background of the college scene, it isn't really working out. There's that new blond Alice (Isabel Lucas) who's got him in her sights, the ominous warning from Optimus Prime in that deep, really convincing synthesized voice of his, that little mess of an unexplained "toxic spill" in Saigon that opens the movie and the massive metal carcass that's been dredged up from a thousand leagues under the sea. As is his lot in life, Sam is needed, the one person on Earth who can possibly beat the Decepticons to the matrix.

"Revenge" is strictly a man's world, really, a boom, boom, bang, bang fever dream of special effects. Yet in all this macho mayhem, it is LaBeouf's young Sam, slight of frame, sensitive and smart, who makes it all work.

Although there are female Autobots and Decepticons in the Transformer universe, they are rare and none make it into the movie, which is too bad because "Revenge" could sure use a woman's touch. The only significant female presence comes from Sam's slightly crazy mom (Julie White) and Fox, who despite wearing white skinny jeans as she stumbles across the desert and jumps through any number of crumbling buildings, manages to stay remarkably clean except for that fetching smudge on her cheek.

Machines and their machinations are clearly where the director's affections lie, leaving the emotional side of "Revenge" to flatline again and again. Still, the film, written by Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, is filled with enough of the familiar to likely satisfy many "Transformer" fans. John Turturro as the now disgraced Sector 7 agent is passing his days working in the family deli and gathering data on the Decepticons in his survivalist-style basement, and Josh Duhamel's Capt. Lennox is still heading his Special Forces troops. We've got big, bad Megatron in cahoots with the towering fearsomeness of the 10-story Devastator. Meanwhile, try as he might, Optimus Prime just can't keep things civil. Neither can Bay.

"Revenge" is in-your-face, ear-splitting and unrelenting. It's easy to walk away feeling like you've spent 2 1/2 hours in the mad, wild hydraulic embrace of a car compactor -- exhilarating or excruciating, depending on your point of view.