War is kind of boring

Rating: 5/10 (28 December 2017)

If you were surprised by the recent news that NBC's "The Office's" pretty boy John Krasinski is gonna be the next Jack Ryan, then you haven't possible seen his against-typecasting projects such as "13 Hours" or, say, "Promised Land".
This one is a modern war movie about American elite soldiers in Libya at its most dangerous times, defending unofficial CIA base from local militants.
Krasinski doesn't kick ass here yet - as Jack Ryan, he has to, surely - but he can shoot bad guys from afar as well as the next guy. Also, tallness and beard help to make a real man out of boyish-looking man, no?
Kidding aside, he looks the part - which is good because this is mostly what the screenplay expects from the stars here. This, and couple of video calls to families, to show their human side.
It's directed by Michael Bay, so you can expect two things: a lot of explosive action and the movie being longer than needed.
At 144 minutes, the never ending war porn does get tiring, especially as the story stays on the shallow side. We don't get to see anything from Libyan side. Maybe the original cut lasting four hours would be deeper and richer content-wise.
So it gets too monotonous for my taste - all shooting and no strong story - but I am not particularly interested in modern war movies, so I may not the best judge of "13 Hours" and its qualities.
But the other critics don't seem to like it much either (50/100 from Rotten Tomatoes, 48/100 from Metacritic), so this does say something. Probably. The site users are kinder: 7.3/10 from IMDb, 82/100 from Rotten Tomatoes, 6.8/10 from Metacritic.
What is surprising, is that Bay managed to pull all this off for paltry 50 million USD budget. These days, he's more used to directing movies three-four times more expensive, due to the man devoting his life for "Transformers" franchise.
By the way, "13 Hours" is based on a true story, and a book that was written about it. Filmed in Malta and Morocco.