Starring Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, and Rachael Taylor. Rated PG.

My car has an Autobot sticker. Even better, my wife bought it.

I'm a fan, and, as a fan, I ask myself why in Transformers Bumblebee isn't a Volkswagen or why Hugo Weaving, instead of Frank Welker, was cast as Megatron.

But fans are not the target audience. Director Michael Bay and executive producer Steven Spielberg were looking to capture those few who don't already know how Optimus Prime and the Autobots became accidental refugees on planet Earth, there to discover that they have been stranded with Decepticons, opponents from a million-year civil war that has left their homeworld Cybertron a hostile ruin.

Hence, Transformers focuses on humans, which is pretty much like making a Superman movie about Jimmy Olson.

Spike Witwicky, the teenage human sidekick to the Autobots, is reimagined as Sam Witwicky. Disturbia's Shia LaBeouf, on the verge of ubiquity, takes on a character composed of off-putting traits (avarice, bluster, rudeness) and redeemed by a slight wit and surprising equanimity under pressure.

The story is basically a love triangle between Sam, his bad-girl classmate Mikaela (Megan Fox), and his car, a cool old Camaro (all of the Autobots are GM cars, which smacks of racism). Then they meet bad guys.

The action sequences, the raison d'être of a movie like this, are plentiful, innovatively staged, and almost convincing. The digital effects are outstanding, of course. They also work because of Bay's surprising sense of pacing. Armageddon will always be his masterpiece, but Transformers reveals a master craftsman in full command. Bay unhurriedly accumulates images, torturously ladles on the comic relief, services the Sam and Mikaela story, and builds tension for the cathartic transformations.

The battles are riveting (and riveted). As with the cartoon, there are numerous and satisfyingly violent combat sequences–in which Bay loses his gift for sentiment, especially for masculine honour and sacrifice–shot in golden hues and slow motion.

Transformers exalts the know-how and doggedness of American (and Autobot) military men while consistently mocking the civilian authorities, typified by Jon Voight and John Turturro (who is, literally, pissed on from a height). It's like Starship Troopers with most of the sarcasm taken out, and it's still the year's best summer movie.