Transformers 3D: The Last Knight

For the first time, the messy hyperactive form and nihilistic crunched-metal content seem to reinforce each other.

By now you know exactly what to expect from a Transformers film: undeniably epic action spectacle at the cost of character, logic or genuine drama. Predictably formulaic.

If for some reason the drawn-out and incoherent battle scenes are what you liked about the earlier films, the climactic one here is still both of those things. The movie is shorter than the last one, though, and considerably more bearable.

Transformers: The Last Knight comes in at 149 minutes, and each of those minutes lasts as long as the reign of Charlemagne.

It seems to me that with The Last Knight, Bay has re-located the franchise's mojo. It's a fun watch.

I love countless dumb action movies - but they've got to be entertaining, and Transformers: The Last Knight is anything but.

Bay's visual sensibility has, if anything, matured, to the point of demanding and earning your exasperated surrender. He has a peerless command of the imaginative excesses of the Hollywood blockbuster.

Anyone capable of explaining the near-incomprehensible storyline deserves a prize of some sort.

The Last Knight leaves behind recent large-scale failures like they were standing still, gasping in its dust, while it pops a wheelie and its horn plays a dubstep remix of "La Cucuracha".

Bay's genuine determination to give you a good time still doesn't result in fun. Overlong, overstuffed and soulless, for fans who grew up with Optimus and Co, The Last Knight will sting like a bee.