A better Bay

Rating: 7/10 (7 June 2016)

13 Hours reminded me a little We Were Soldiers. This is a very literal war movie, a movie about exactly what you see on the screen and seldom anything deeper (like politics). What you see is survival, street-smarts, comradery and a lot of violence. This is no Saving Private Ryan, but it's not a movie of cheep thrills either. What it amounts to is an intelligent action movie.
With the exemption of a couple of shots, Michael Bay successfully rises above his pornographic tendencies to make a movie that is 'mostly' unsexy, which is probably the highest compliment anyone can give him. Of course, he has a long way to go to become a good dramatist. The battle sequences are convincing and even immersing (despite the shaky cam), however there were times when it felt like less would have been more.
A little less violence and a little more introspective dialog would have certainly made 13 Hours more worthy of a two and a half hour running length. There are moments when you can see John Krasinski and James Badge Dale start to sparkle a bit as actors, but unfortunately the introspective scenes are too few to make characters out of any of these soldiers.
Most of the violence takes place at night, and Michael Bay opts for a rather surrealist style of lighting that resembles Dario Argento films. Every second bulb in the frame radiates green light. This is a gorgeously lit movie, perhaps even a little too much so. Michael Bay, being who he his, can help but prefer to show sunlight only in the more romantic golden hours of the day, at dusk and dawn. By contrast, in a film like Hurt Locker, the sun is white hot and blinding, and completely unromantic.
I won't deny that it is refreshing to see a Michael Bay movie where an explosion from a rocket impact is not something to dazzle with a fireball but something that is visibly destructive and very real. 13 Hours can be appreciated if you come at it from a right angle.