Team America: World Police

Rating: 3/10 (1 May 2020)

This was a fine piece of imperialist, militarist propaganda masquerading as "truth".
The truth claim is repeated over and over again in the blu-ray extras, as well as in the opening titles of the movies itself: "This is a true story"
Just 15 seconds before this claim, the opening titles also claimed that "The CIA watched for lethal weapons before they spread to the global black market"
Two years before this movie premiered Seymour Hersh published an article, "The Red Line and the Rat Line", in London Review of Books which revealed that the purpose of the consular annex was the exact opposite of what the movie claims. The consulate's only mission was to provide cover for the moving of arms. The so-called "rat line" was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition (to Assad). Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida.
So right off the bat I knew that the "truth" claim was to be taken with an enormous grain of salt.
The blu-ray extras also hail Bay's aim for realism. As one actor claimed, "His attention to detail is unbelievable, and he's committed to doing it properly". Then we see Bay gingerly trimming the cuts on Pablo Schreiber's clothes with a small scissors. Of course, the extras also point out the military training the actors had to go through, all in the name of realism.
And then Michael Bay hires an actor with the strongest Iranian accent imaginable, who obviously doesn't speak a word of Arabic, to play the Arabic interpreter Amahl. That's some attention to detail you got there, Mike. Couldn't find a single Arabic speaking actor (who, importantly,can also master the distinct Libyan Maghrebi dialect anywhere? Or perhaps realism is only interesting when it has to do with the military and guns, as per usual in Hollywood movies.
And of course, since the movie is blatant propaganda, no one questions with a single word the very existence of a secret base with armed military personnel, who apparently have enough arms to fight a smaller civil war. Actually, the only one who makes sense in this whole movie is the appointed villain, the milquetoast, pudgy and balding CIA chief (in contrast to the buff military guys who Bay carefully show off shirtless and glistening with sweat) who points out that they have no jurisdiction and aren't even officially there. Of course, the other characters and the movie itself tell him to go frak himself, the stormtroopers of the empire can do as they damn well please! And of course, the blu-extras contain the usual circle jerk with people in the production tripping over each other in a competition to see who can praise the military the most.
Technically, the movie is great, especially the cinematography. However, the lack of continuity where we can cut from night, to daylight, to dusk, to night again between shots is a further indication of the level of attention to detail this movie pays.
Bay is a great director of action spectacle, but he has never been able to master character moments. Those parts of the movie, especially the scenes where Krasinski's character is speaking with his family, are about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face. Krasinski turned out to be a great director with "A Quiet Place", but he has never been much of an actor, and this movie is not an exception.
If this movie had just presented itself as an action flick, that would have been fine. But the "truth" claim killed it.