5 reasons to see The Transformers film

With intentions of viewing the new Fantastic Four movie, I get to the local theater and discover that FF isn't playing, so I see the Transformers instead. There are I few things I didn't care for in this homage to the old 1980's cartoon, including several sex references that have no business in a kid's flick. This aside, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the movie, for these 5 reasons:

1. Troops are portrayed as heroic- The whole film is pretty military oriented, with stealth jets, tanks, infantry, ect. The soldiers are really given top billing, almost as costars. At one time, a GI holds a gun to the head of a CIA type which is torturing one of the robots, and the equally heroic Defense Secretary warns the agent "Losing is not an option for these guys".
2. Rumsfeld-like Defense Secretary played as hero- As I mentioned above, the Secretary, played by the great Jon Voight, is one of the good guys in the movie, which really surprised me given all the anti-Rumsfeld press of late.
3. Shia Lebeouf-An up and coming young star has one of the best lines in the film that has implications for our wars in Iraq and elsewhere: "No victory without sacrifice".
4. Special Effects-You'd think we'd be tired of all the overdone computer effects in films today, but the robots look and perform well up to par. Bravo, bravo!
5. Cartoon voices-At first, the familiar voices emanating from the Autobots and Decepticons sounded a little silly, but they brought back a lot of memories from my youth, and were very welcome.

This movie makes me think there's hope for Hollywood yet, with all the heroics involved, and an old fashioned "good versus evil" plot. Its also as close to a pro war propaganda flick that you can expect from tinsel town these days, so enjoy it while you can.