The American dream lives on in Shia LaBeouf’s everyman, an impotent and ineffectual college kid living a fantasy life cribbed from a video game or the pages of Maxim. He’s the hapless schmuck who, through no merit of his own, has greatness thrust upon him; in the process, he becomes a magnet for hyperviolent giant robots and nubile females. Megan Fox is the flipside of this testosterone-baiting fantasy. Her character serves no discernible purpose other than being an accessory on the leading man’s arm, and to pose in objectifying positions. Her personhood is mostly reduced to fetishistic prolonged shots of body parts that sometimes pan up to reveal someone talking.

If Bay has one consistent artistic inclination other than the lowest common denominator, it’s his obsession with fascistic imagery. And Fallen is no exception. The film is brimming with quasi-pornographic shots of every variety of military hardware imaginable, soldiers walking in slow motion, and flapping flags. No celebration of good ol’ fashioned groupthink would be complete without a big-screen glorification of the military’s newest toy, the Predator Drone. It’s an infuriatingly blatant attempt to normalize perceptions of a weapon system that has been rightfully tainted by bad press.

- Mike’s review of Transformers

2 years ago   |  2 notes