As opposed to say, Saving Private Ryan's slow-motion D Day sequence or every award winning gang execution based on a true story, or the stark black and white filters during Schindler's list and its infamous balcony scene? Those aren't artistic renditions of their real world subject matter?
How many mainstream films do you see that shoot their characters to death absent musical accompaniment or elegant shot compositions? You get arthouse films with victims screaming into a void.
I think my point is that he has a hard time restraining himself from descending into Bayisms, even when it works against the scene or tone you want to give him credit for trying to achieve.
Moments before the "walking away from the explosion in slow mo" shot, the three murderers were bumbling fools. Anthony Mackie was clinically retarded for putting on the seatbelt, Wahlberg was just barely making the plans work after being idiot enough to wear his distinctive cologne or whatever, and The Rock was engaged in his religious "Mike Tyson caring for pigeons" buffoonery so that the three of them were just barely succeeding at making the car crash with Shalhoub in it, and were still bickering.
But now that it was time for Shalhoub to actually die, Bay does it the only way he knows how. Low angle shot of Wahlberg swinging the fire thing in slow mo, and then walk away like Seal Team Six as the car explodes behind them, just like they planned...so exactly according to plan that they don't even need to look back in surprise at how loud it was or dive for cover from shrapnel or burning gasoline or anything.
Thirty seconds earlier, these guys were buffoons of the highest order, buckling up murder victims to make their own plot fail and then bickering in the street like...three fat black women in any other Michael Bay movie.
But now the page says the car burns so Michael Bay does it the only way Michael Bay can. Something's on fire and blows up, so somebody has to be a stud walking away from that blowing up stuff.
Like I've said about this movie several times now, that scene still works...well enough. But I actually can't even picture Bay setting up the part where the car burns any other way, regardless of what kind of movie he is making.
I just have a hard time keeping a straight face when I see something like Michael Bay's...fortieth? slow mo explosion shot mentioned alongside the directorial choices in Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan.
At this point, I don't know if it's even a directorial choice for Bay rather than a reflex.
