Review of 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016) by Jeff B — 04 Jul 2016

Though it deserves better than to be stored away in The Hurt Locker, 13 Hours chronicles a harrowing real-life siege while never fully making the audience feel the emotion and stakes of that fateful day. Sgt. Joe Friday said it best: "Just the facts, ma'am." Just look to the source material. Investigative reporter Mitchell Zuckoff's bestselling book of almost the same name, which documents the September 11, 2012 attack by militants at the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi in great detail, rarely - if ever - editorializes. Even the subtitle, "The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi," strives for straightforwardness. The adaptation, meanwhile, presents these C.I.A. contractors as Real American Heroes along the hyper-realistic lines of G.I. Joe (belied by the much more subjective subtitle "The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi"). And yes, brave and nationalistic they may be, but filmgoers are smart enough to make that judgment just by watching the truth unfold alone. Spoonfeeding rarely goes over well when dealing with material this weighty. As better examples of films that make more of an honest connection, Black Hawk Down and Zero Dark Thirty Never both present grittily authentic combat with a (mostly) fact-based story to back it up. 13 Hours, on the other hand, presents grittily augmented combat with a doctored version of the facts. The action and performances hit hard and rarely let up but they do so with a heavy hand behind them.

In this R-rated drama from director Michael Bay (Bad Boys, The Rock, Armageddon), an American Ambassador gets killed during an attack at a U.S. compound in Libya as a security team struggles to make sense out of the chaos.

Never mind Rodney Dangerfield. Michael Bay rarely gets respect. A remarkable departure for the director, who's primarily worked on the Transformers series since 2007, his latest film fares better than his past attempts to document true stories (Exhibit A: Pearl Harbor; Exhibit B: Pain & Gain). As much as he dials back his usual overbearing style, however, some stylistic tics still end up in the final cut. To show us the Age of Innocence, kids race through a field in slow motion with linens swaying in the breeze. To show us the Age of Experience, the silhouettes of our contract soldiers march in slow motion with a setting sun as the background. Indeed, 13 Hours waves a flag for us whereby it should just let us watch it naturally wave in the breeze and stir up thoughts and feelings organically.

Bottom line: Wag the Devil Dog.