13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

I’m sure there is an audience for “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi”, but it certainly isn’t me. I don’t object to films that glorify the American military. It takes a lot of guts to put your life on the line, even more so in a foreign country where extremists want you to leave. I don’t have the backbone to do what these people call a job, and perhaps that makes me somewhat immune to the sentimentality of these war films. Unless you’re a proud military man, you’ve been to Libya and there’s nothing you love more than the ol’ red, white and blue I think you’ll be able to see through the razzle-dazzle of the action sequences and realize how flat this film is.

Based on true events, the film is set in 2012, Benghazi. When the United States’ Embassy is attacked by Islamic militants, the only people who can save U. S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens (Matt Letscher) and protect the U. S. civilians working at the embassy are a group of 6 hired militants: “Rone” Woods (James Badge Dale), Jack Da Silva (John Krasinski), “Oz” Geist (Max Martini, John “Tig” (Dominic Fumusa), “Tanto” Paronto (Pablo Schreiber) and Boon (David Denman.)

“13 Hours” takes the military clichés to the max and proudly waves them in front of your face. It’s like it doesn’t know that we’ve seen these tropes before. How many times have we witnessed the soldier who is proud to announce to his friends “hey guess what guys, I just learned that my wife and I are expecting a baby! ” suddenly get stuck in a life-or-death situation? I’m so tired of that. It’s like if you’re in the military you can’t have hobbies or dreams except raising children. Your entire existence is defined by being a father. Yes I understand people have families, but you don’t know ANYTHING about the six heroes of this movie except for the fact that they’re pros and they are married with children, unless it’s the one guy who reads the one book to pull out an inspirational quote to be repeated throughout the film. They’re completely interchangeable and when someone gets hurt it’s really hard to care because you can’t distinguish Tig from Tanto or Boon from Oz.

Everyone in “13 Hours” is a cliché. The hired guns are noble and proud to serve their country, manage to keep a cool face except when one of their friends die. The higher ups have no purpose except to show us how incompetent everyone but the 6 badasses are and to repeatedly throw wrenches in the mechanism that would save the embassy from those evil militants. I know how it is in real life. Generals and people who aren’t in the sludge up to their elbows often don’t understand what the stakes are, but it’s ridiculous here. When you stack it on top of cheap imagery like a sad American flag riddled with bullets sinking in a pool or a photo of one of these guys’ newborn son flying in the wind after an explosion to symbolize how serious the injuries they’ve just sustained are, it becomes way too much.

This last criticism may be unique to just me, but I have very mixed feelings about the portrayal of the Libyan people in this picture. Yes I realize the film is based on true events, but we all know to take that with a grain of salt and that facts get fudged all the time. As portrayed here, pretty much every person that isn’t American is a coward and more than likely to want to kill you if you’re white. “13 Hours” aims to highlight the heroism of these real-life people who did sacrifice a lot for others, but I would have liked a more balanced approach. How about more screen time for Peyman Moaadi, whose character puts his life on the line just as much as everyone else? Like I said, maybe I’m just removed from the situation these guys are in and/or just too sensitive.

“13 Hours” does not glorify warfare, it features exciting sequences of combat and it sure does look good on the big screen. That does not compensate for how flat these characters are. I find myself in the position where I have to question what Michael Bay is doing. You’d expect someone intelligent like him (you have to be to keep getting work in Hollywood like he does) to try and hone his craft over the years, but he isn’t. “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” is being released in January, obviously aiming to capitalize on the same sentiments that made “American Sniper” a smash hit and there’s no way it will be. It just isn’t that good. (Theatrical version on the big screen, January 31, 2016)