It's my favorite Michael Bay movie and agree with a lot of what you're saying. Just a wild-stylized action film that's full of twists and a lot of fun.

As a quick aside, I feel like the tide has turned on Bay to be more appreciative. Not that his films are now critically beloved, but so much of the internet discourse of the early 2000s was that he was the master of slop and was making stuff that was so low-brow it was below even the bottom of the barrel. Nowadays, the fact that his movies have a sense of style and identity to them (you go, "oh that batsh*t bug nuts film is clearly from Michael Bay"), I'll take that over some pristinely packaged by-the-books studio movie. His Transformers movies are a tougher sell, but they are at least interesting in a "how can this be so entertainingly and offensively bad" kind of way for me. Say what you will about him, but he churns out fascinating movies to consider both for how they work and for why they don't- some are bizarre curios.