Robots and mahjong: Hong Kong's starring role
Much of the hype for Transformers: Age of Extinction focuses on it being a Hollywood-China co-production. Local audiences will be amused by its final half-hour which is set in Hong Kong. Images such as birdcages, mahjong and a Cantonese opera billboard are thrown in for good measure.
Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Li Bingbing
Michael Bay
IIA
Much of the hype for Transformers: Age of Extinction focuses on it being a Hollywood-China co-production. Local audiences will be amused by its final half-hour which is set in Hong Kong. Images such as birdcages, mahjong and a Cantonese opera billboard are thrown in for good measure.
Often incoherent and noisy, the profitable film franchise surrenders any narrative logic.
Five years have passed since Chicago was demolished in the last instalment, Dark of the Moon (2011), and the remaining Autobots are being hunted down by the government. Their extraterrestrial technology is extracted by Stanley Tucci's scientist to build soulless Transformers for national defence, but no one realises the work is revitalising the other group of alien robots, the Decepticons.
When a small-town mechanic (Mark Wahlberg) retrieves Autobot leader Optimus Prime from a disused theatre in Texas, the stage is set for another round of robot carnage.
