13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

So when I first saw the trailer for 13 Hours. I got super pumped. From the beginning of this trailer there are just a lot of reasons to get excited about this film. Its got John Krasinski (Jim from the Office) and James Badge Dale (24, The Departed), who I think are both incredibly underrated actors as badass looking Navy SEALs/ contractors or whatever, they just look cool. Then you start to realize that this movie is about the 2012 Attack on the Libyan embassy which resulted in the death of 4 service members including a United States ambassador Chris Stevens. Suddenly this goes from a bad ass action movie, to a historical event that is still a hot topic four years later. Politicians still invoke the name Benghazi into rhetoric so this has the potential to either be an incredibly sore subject, or a feature to honor those who fought and died in this event, its all about how they present it. They show the embassy being overrun, you see some really intense imagery. And unfortunately, in the trailer you're getting excited about how they're going to show this incredibly tragic event... until you see who is directing this display

There were people who openly groaned in the theater when I first saw this trailer when Michael Bay's name showed up. And I'm not gonna lie, when I saw this my expectations went down quite a bit. Unfortunately, Michael Bay just doesn't have the track record to do a movie on such a tender subject and assure us that its going to be good. Which is incredibly unfortunate. The trailer for this movie made this film look like it was going to be on par with other intense war movies like American Sniper, The Lone Survivor, and Zero Dark Thirty. And the sad thing is... this movie could have been. Had it not been directed by Michael Bay.

13 Hours takes place in Benghazi Libya. In an actually pretty good opening, its explained that when Mommar Gadhaffi, Libya became a very dangerous place and all diplomatic buildings from the US got closed down except for a small diplomatic outpost and a covert CIA operation center. These government operations were protected by hired contractors who are former elite military operatives. That's where John Krasinski's character comes in as Jack Silva, a former Navy SEAL who is the new guy in the team of incredibly trained contractors, led by Tyrone Woods (played by James Badge Dale).

The beginning of this movie is actually really interesting because its set a few weeks before the actual attack on September 11th 2012. These guys are doing their job as body guards for the CIA operations going on in Libya. And I'll tell you, they do not paint the CIA very great in this movie. In order to make these ex-military contractors look like total badasses, they really paint the CIA agents as these stuck up, never seen any combat weaklings. And don't get me wrong, I'm sure these people who worked for the CIA in Benghazi were not as tactically trained as the private contractors, but they're just painted in the worst way in this movie.

And of course they're led by this clown.

This guy was the first sign that this was a Michael Bay movie and not a culturally relevant movie about a tragedy. While he was played by David Costabile (a guy I really enjoyed from Breaking Bad), this guy is not a character, he's a caricature. He's that government official who gets in the way of the main characters for no legitimate reason but because the script calls for it.

And the sad thing is, I think this was based off a real person. I just read an article about the guy this is suppose to be based off of and then I thought about that and realized that Michael Bay created a movie that painted this guy as an incompetent asshole. A guy who is very much still alive. Even if it is true, you're basically saying this guy was responsible for the deaths of a US ambassador. Regardless of whether its true or not, thats kind of a low blow in my book.

I suppose theres a little bit of a political edge to that sword as conservatives might say this guy is representative of the Hilary Clinton State Department but c'mon Michael Bay! Don't continue to politicize a tragedy more than it already has been, especially when its dealing with the death of 4 Americans.

I don't know, I just think that that character could have been handled more and they could have made this movie about the struggle of a group of Americans to survive in a hostile environment instead of throwing the blame on bureaucrats like this movie was definitely trying to do.

But I do have to give Michael Bay credit where credit is due. Because he really handles the entire event in a pretty respectful way.

I thought the performance of Matt Letscher as Chris Stevens was done very well and the reactions to this horrible event are really done well. You see the terror in their eyes, you see the panic that everyone would face. It was so good it was almost a little bit uncomfortable because you know how it ends for him and its sad.

And don't get me wrong I thought a lot of this movie was good. Beyond the obvious caricature of David Costabile's character and the obvious Hollywood ploys for a lot of the characters, I thought the display of this event was really well done. I didn't know if they could make a 2 hour film on an event that seemed to come and go really fast but the fact is there was a lot more to that story than I think people knew and its a story worth telling.

I feel like this could have been a really good movie with a compelling story if it wasn't for one aspect of it and sadly, its Michael Bay. There's just a ton of shots, dialogue, jokes, and of course explosions in this movie that reek of Michael Bay.

Believe it or not, the explosions actually worked pretty well for this movie and they weren't overdone. I'm talking more about the lines of dialogue that are just schmaltzy and corny that you just sigh and say, "Goddammit Bay".

And I get it, in a movie like this, there needs to be a little bit of Red White and Blue chest pounding, but it was done in such an over the top way that I couldn't help but groan the same way I did when I saw Michael Bay was directing this.

So while this movie has a great story, and a lot of it is executed very well if not perfectly, its just sugar coated with Michael Bayisms that took me out of it.

That being said, I do have to give Michael Bay some credit because you can tell he was holding back. That's not saying much because there is a lot of dumb dialogue in this movie, there's a lot of poorly timed jokes, and of course, there are a lot of explosions, but if someone wasn't familiar with Bay's style, they may not catch onto it. You can tell that Bay wanted this to be as respectful and in good taste as possible, but you can always tell when a Bayism is peaking its head out.

And then it brings me to the acting.

Honestly I've been going back and forth with John Krasinski because on one hand, this is something totally different from his time in The Office so I think we can now see him in a movie without thinking of Jim from The Office.

However, I can't totally say I was on board with all his choices. He's very good at looking like a badass, I definitely didn't see Jim Halpert. But at the same time, he was a little too stoic. And then I think to myself that I know guys like this and they are pretty stoic, but then I think that's not really an interesting character and I just go back and forth. The short of it is, I think it was a good role. I'd like to see Krasinski do more and really show his talent as an actor but for this it was passable. He made for a good main character, even if he was a little wooden at certain times.

And then there's James Badge Dale.

Now I've known about Dale from his time as Chase in 24 season 3. I really enjoy him as an actor and I really wish he was in more because he is a really talented actor.

And this movie he really shines. I was so glad to see that he wasn't just the supporting character, he was one of the main characters and I thought he really carried a lot of the film. I thought him and Krasinski really worked well together as well as everyone in the cast.

Unfortunately again, a lot of what I liked about the performances were brought by the actors themselves and not really the script that they were working with. Again, it wasn't horrible, it just reeked with Bayisms that it was a little hard to move past.

Now I'm reading over some of the stuff that I've said and I think that maybe I went into this looking for the Bayisms and that's what took me out. And maybe it was, I just feel like this movie could have been really phenomenal and been on par with those war movies that I mentioned before like American Sniper and Zero Dark Thirty.

But Michael Bay is a lot more focused on the action.

Speaking of which, let's talk about the action.

I'll talk all day about how Michael Bay doesn't really understand character development or a good script, but one thing that he does understand is how to shoot an action sequence. And he does it incredibly well.

There were a couple of sequences that had a pretty shaky camera, however, I am the kind of person who isn't exactly bothered by that if it makes sense for the scene. I thought the way they shot those scenes were really good and the shaky camera didn't bother me too much in this.

But the part that I loved about this movie was how intense it was. I'm not talking about the fighting itself because at a certain point, once you've seen Saving Private Ryan or any war movie, you kind of get used to the war scenes. No, what made this movie different was how it portrayed street to street fighting. These guys are fighting on enemy turf, where they live. They have allies in the Libyan government and military but you can't tell who is who and you never know if someone is going to pop out of the bushes and try and kill them. Its hard to tell who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. And considering a lot of what Michael Bay has done has been borderline racist, he deals with the local population in a semi appropriate manner.

The terrorists look evil, but almost cartoonish evil, but they mention it at some point that this is a totally different culture and its not something they're used to. I don't know how accurate it is, because I haven't been to Libya, but it was tense and an aspect of the war we face in the Middle East that I don't think we've seen very much and if we have it hasn't been done like this.

I really enjoyed 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. I just put that out there. I thought the action was good. I thought it was intense and made me feel, especially about a topic that is so relevant to today. I just think the biggest flaw this movie had was the choice to have Michael Bay direct it.

As much as I wanted this to be Michael Bay's comeback, as much as I wanted it to be his way to show people he can make a great movie, I can really only say I was minorly impressed with it. It gives me a little bit of hope that Michael Bay can restrain himself enough to make a movie about Benghazi that I thought was while a little more political than it needed to be, was respectful.

I thought this movie was intense. I thought the performances, though a little Bay inspired, were good. And I thought the action was good. The main problem I had was Michael Bay. I think that while he was restraining himself, he wasn't the right choice for a movie that could have been on par with Black Hawk Down. In fact, why the hell didn't Ridley Scott direct this film? I feel like if this movie had been pushed back a year and The Martian had come out well before the production of this movie, Ridley Scott would have directed this film. I would have liked to see this concept in the hands of him or a Clint Eastwood because I just feel like they would have done it better.

Oh well. What we got was good. Not great as it probably could have been, but good.

But what did you think of 13 Hours? Comment and Discuss below!

You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 and send me your requests for future movies I should review. If you follow me on Twitter you can also get updates on future movie news and reviews as well as live tweets occasionally from movies I'm watching at home.

I'll leave you with this. The reason I haven't done too many movie reviews is that I'm getting caught up on a couple different television shows. I'm hoping I can knock out a couple reviews soon on some of the shows I've been watching. One of them is Turn: Washington's Spies. Here's the trailer for that.