Transformers: The Last Knight

Once the psycho wunderkind who gave up some of his salary to buy an extra explosion for Bad Boys, and the most aggressive cinematic purveyor of “the cuck stops here” machismo ever since, 52-year-old Michael Bay might be softening with age. The central conflict in Transformers: The Last Knight involves refugee aliens immigrating to Earth from a violent homeland, and Bay seems to side with the besieged immigrants rather than the travel ban crowd. There are multiple heroic female characters with little drooling objectification, a vaguely eco-friendly message about coming together to “heal the planet” and if that’s not enough, count a French-accented Transformer among the Autobot good guys. Bay tones down the rhetoric, but not the bombast. At a certain point, I simply surrendered to The Last Knight. I don’t think I had a choice. The film had me surrounded, and I just wanted to see my family again. D.B.