Gripping

Rating: 10/10 (29 January 2019)

Michael Bay can direct a bloody great film when he wants to. "13 Hours" is that film and it's unlike anything I've had a chance to see from him before. Leaning on the structure of "Attack on Precinct 13" (1976) and restricting himself from his trade-mark bombastical style, he's built a gripping account of the attack on the US embassy and the CIA outpost in Benghazi on September 11th, 2012. Why the things went down the way they did is a bit of a mistery to this day and it was even more so at the time. The reasons were lost on the CIA military detachment - all they knew for sure was that they couldn't trust anyone in the country that hosted them and were pretty much on their own to the very end. The idea to tell the story as a horror was therefore on the money. The assailants were shown coming in wave after wave, in a reckless disregard for their own lives. By all accounts that's how it actually happened. They were not portrayed as a faceless horde, though. We're not given their motivation but we are shown their human side, and reminded how loss of life is terrible, no matter what side you're on. This doesn't go to say that the film doesn't take a stand. It does. But it's not one of rampant patriotism, like one could've seen in Bay's own "Pearl Harbor" or Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down". It didn't try to portray the defeat as a victory. It didn't show the USA as a righteous peacekeeper. It's shown the American survivors counting their blessings for coming out alive and questioning what they've actually accomplished and what difference did they make at all. The role of the unseen decision makers at the top of the command structure was implicitly criticised as well. The question mark is even visualised with the very last shot in the film showing the Star Spangled Banner partially charred, riddled with bullet holes and submerged into the pool at the embassy. So it is a political film after all, but a quietly reserved one, concentrated on the realism and clarity of action, as well as on the human experience in the midst of all of it. It's one of a kind for Michael Bay, but also one of a kind for this decade in the passing. Almost ironic that people had to die for Hollywood to come up with something memorable.