13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016)
Directed by Michael Bay
An American Ambassador is killed during an attack at a U.S. compound in Libya as a security team struggles to make sense out of the chaos.
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What critics say influenced 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
It is neither as grossly gratuitous as Peter Berg's "Lone Survivor" nor as gripping as Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down."
In the hands of the right filmmaker, a film about Benghazi might have yielded something like Ridley Scott's “ Black Hawk Down ,” another chronicle of a mission in an unstable land that went horribly wrong.
In that regard “13 Hours” is more the latter, casting shades of “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Black Hawk Down.”
This is the kind of war film that will be a hard to shake off because it's so intense much like The Hurt Locker, American Sniper, Lone Survivor and Black Hawk Down.
In trying to make his Black Hawk Down, Michael Bay has inadvertently made his own The Green Berets—as envisioned by Donald Trump.
He wanted to direct Black Hawk Down, but Ridley Scott got there first.
Bay even sets the scene with a flickering caption in a blocky sans-serif computer font, evoking the 1970s and '80s classics of genre directors like John Carpenter, whose Assault on Precinct 13 might well be a specific reference point.
But “13 Hours” is best understood as an action-movie/video game variation on real events, a sort of mash-up of tha attack on the Alamo and John Carpenter’s “Assault on Precinct 13.”
The plot to Bay's "13 Hours" also brings to mind horror director John Carpenter's 1976 siege thriller, "Assault on Precinct 13," albeit with more firepower and much bigger turf to protect from insurgents.
Indeed, the "siege" aspect of the movie borrows from not only Westerns but from such shockers as "Night of the Living Dead" and John Carpenter's scary urban thriller, "Assault on Precinct 13."
Most of all, it’s a tribute to the brave U.S. fighters who kept a horrific situation from turning much worse, and it’s on that support-our-troops score — which propelled “American Sniper” and “Lone Survivor” to surprise-hit status — that this Paramount release will have its best shot at connecting with war-weary domestic audiences beyond Bay’s fan base.
This is the kind of war film that will be a hard to shake off because it's so intense much like The Hurt Locker, American Sniper, Lone Survivor and Black Hawk Down.
Hoping to capitalize on the box-office bonanza of two previous rah-rah military movies that opened wide in January — Lone Survivor and American Sniper — Bay keeps blowing shit up for a punishing two hours and 24 minutes.
A moving tale of heroism and sacrifice wrapped in an explosive package that will quicken your pulse, 13 Hours is sure to appeal to the audiences that turned out for American Sniper and Lone Survivor.
His superior and friend is Tyrone “Rone” Woods (a beefed-up James Badge Dale), who is also there mainly for money, but it is hinted at that he likes being in the field (a point better explored in “American Sniper”).
It is neither as grossly gratuitous as Peter Berg's "Lone Survivor" nor as gripping as Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down."
Most of all, it’s a tribute to the brave U.S. fighters who kept a horrific situation from turning much worse, and it’s on that support-our-troops score — which propelled “American Sniper” and “Lone Survivor” to surprise-hit status — that this Paramount release will have its best shot at connecting with war-weary domestic audiences beyond Bay’s fan base.
And while it’s not on par with either of those movies, it is more thought-provoking than the straight-up chest-pounding of “Lone Survivor,” the Taliban-hunting Peter Berg film from 2013.
This is the kind of war film that will be a hard to shake off because it's so intense much like The Hurt Locker, American Sniper, Lone Survivor and Black Hawk Down.
Hoping to capitalize on the box-office bonanza of two previous rah-rah military movies that opened wide in January — Lone Survivor and American Sniper — Bay keeps blowing shit up for a punishing two hours and 24 minutes.
He then wanted to direct Lone Survivor, but Peter Berg snatched it out from under him.
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Frankly, the best writing in the film is featured in a clip from “ Tropic Thunder ” that is shown and considering what that movie is about—a group of actors going off to film a war story that proves to be not quite as accurate as advertised—its inclusion comes across as either the sickest joke imaginable or a weird bit of meta-commentary that somehow got slipped into the mix.
The characters refer to other films: "Black Hawk Down," "The Bourne Identity," "Tropic Thunder."
So, Rone and his team are a mile away at the CIA base, a once-private walled compound next to a slaughterhouse, spending their day off playing video games, watching “Tropic Thunder” and calling their families.
But that reference is as true to this group’s history as their love for Robert Downey Jr. proclaiming in Tropic Thunder , “I’m the dude playin’ the dude, disguised as another dude!”
Some read Joseph Campbell, some Facetime with their kids and wives, some quote "Tropic Thunder" and all look out for one another.
Beebe, doing his most striking handheld work since Michael Mann’s “Collateral” and “Miami Vice,” captures images of staggering brutality, but there’s an eerie seductiveness to his palette as well, from the regular use of night-vision footage to the sight of this still-beautiful beach city (played by a mix of locations in Morocco and Malta) lit up by fires and flares.
Its lengthy siege and chase set pieces combine Bay’s usual pomp (e.g., the arc of a mortar shell, followed from loading to impact) with wild, smeared, very digital camerawork of the kind that cinematographer Dion Beebe previously pulled off for Michael Mann on Collateral and Miami Vice .
Director of photography Dion Beebe ("Collateral") uses lots of traveling crane shots which, along with 'teletyped' information in the lower left frame give the movie the feel of a Tony Scott thriller.
Bay will be Bay, but the actual look of the film is something else entirely, thanks to Dion Beebe, the DP responsible for the form-stretching digital cinematography of Collateral and Miami Vice .
But I was thinking less of the Alamo than The Alamo, John Wayne’s bloated, simplistic 1960 directorial debut – or better yet, his notorious 1968 Vietnam epic The Green Berets, whose sensitive handling of a divisive conflict is just about in line with Bay’s.
It plays like “The Green Berets” or “Hamburger Hill,” or any of the wave of Reagan Era “This time we WIN” Vietnam pictures.
In trying to make his Black Hawk Down, Michael Bay has inadvertently made his own The Green Berets—as envisioned by Donald Trump.
Beebe, doing his most striking handheld work since Michael Mann’s “Collateral” and “Miami Vice,” captures images of staggering brutality, but there’s an eerie seductiveness to his palette as well, from the regular use of night-vision footage to the sight of this still-beautiful beach city (played by a mix of locations in Morocco and Malta) lit up by fires and flares.
Its lengthy siege and chase set pieces combine Bay’s usual pomp (e.g., the arc of a mortar shell, followed from loading to impact) with wild, smeared, very digital camerawork of the kind that cinematographer Dion Beebe previously pulled off for Michael Mann on Collateral and Miami Vice .
Bay will be Bay, but the actual look of the film is something else entirely, thanks to Dion Beebe, the DP responsible for the form-stretching digital cinematography of Collateral and Miami Vice .
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The politics here are the more simple kind, the sort that Ted Cruz (a big fan of this film, natch) suggests when he scornfully refers to “New York values” or that made Jack Nicholson’s “You can’t handle the truth!” speech from A Few Good Men such a favorite.
This is the kind of war film that will be a hard to shake off because it's so intense much like The Hurt Locker, American Sniper, Lone Survivor and Black Hawk Down.
This is no “Zero Dark Thirty” or “The Hurt Locker.”
Points of reference include any number of historical fictions dramatizing modern military conflicts in the Middle East: Peter Berg's "The Kingdom" and "Lone Survivor," Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down," Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker," Clint Eastwood's "American Sniper."
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi is a movie for anyone who saw The Hurt Locker and thought, “You know what would make this really good?