Ripped from the Headlines and Turned into a Michael Bay Slog-Fest

Rating: 4/10 (28 January 2016)

I don't know an exorbitant amount about the events that transpired September 11, 2012. The things I do know are disputed left and right by various talking heads, politicians and supposed experts none of which were actually there. What I do know is the biases you have towards the subject matter will invariably inform your ability to like this movie. Therefore I would like to sidestep the debate of the film's accuracy and instead focus on the movie as a piece of art.
The story begins with Jack Silva (Krasinski) as our introduction to Benghazi just after the revolution. He lands at the airport and is greeted by friend and brother in arms 'Rone' (Dale). From there they drive to the CIA annex headed by bureaucratic nancy-boy CIA Chief Bob (Costabile). Their mission: keep CIA assets safe while they locate and eliminate Muammar Gaddafi's weapons arsenals before they are sold to terrorists. Things however go sour shortly after the arrival of Ambassador Chris Stevens (Letscher) a "true believer" in diplomacy and progress. On the anniversary of 9/11, a group of terrorists storm the American Diplomatic compound where Ambassador Stevens is held up; the only people available to save them are Jack, Rone and their stable of ex-military contractors.
13 Hours is not very good; as a piece of art, as a piece of non- fiction, as a piece of entertainment. In fact the only type of piece it is I dare not say and the fault of that lies squarely on director Michael Bay. Throughout his illustrious career, Bay has made a compendium of high-octane action-thrillers that have, for better or worse, changed the grammar of action movies for an entire generation. What he does on purpose, he does well; that is to say cater to the lowest common denominator and make things go boom real good.
Yet what he does unintentionally is hold an entire audience hostage and exhausts them with a cavalcade of explosions and loud noises. To break the cacophony, he adds moments of familial and brotherly dialogues that could have worked if his constant cutting and dynamic camera movements didn't make everything look and feel phoned-in. In fact every scene where someone isn't shooting, there is a complete lack of tension. At one point Silva comments to Rone that he hates the wait in-between shelling and gunfire; "Your adrenaline starts to slow and your mind starts to wonder." Brother I feel for you.
Krasinski, Dale, Schreiber and the rest do their best with a nuts- and-bots script. Despite every important character sporting a bushy beard and flexing serious muscle, they fleshed their characters out just enough to make them interesting. I wish I could say the same thing for everyone outside of the group of contractors. Costabile gets the short end of the stick playing the pompous, weak-willed CIA Chief who has shades of Walter Peck of Ghostbusters (1984) fame. At one point he snarls at Silva saying, "we have people who graduated from Harvard and Yale here...Do your job and stay out of our way." I don't know what callous jock tied him to the flagpole in high school but there is no way that kind of sourpuss would be working for the CIA. Him and the rest of the CIA analysts act like a spiteful chess team facing off against a team of iconoclastic football quarterbacks. Even in extraordinary situations they preen and complain; that is until they get a sample of the contractors "manliness". That's when they fall in line in performances so needlessly one-note that they all might as well be mannequins.
I may have given this movie a pass if it had just a hint of insidious meta-text like Bay's slapdash crime story Pain & Gain (2013). Alas the man has fallen back on old tricks; at one point depicting the same clockwise-counterclockwise epic shot he's used to rub vigorously into his audiences faces. There is no parable in the chaos like the far superior Black Hawk Down (2001). There is not an emotional core like there was in Lone Survivor (2013). There is no political theme, patriotic rebel-rousing or point; just Bayhem.