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13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016)
Lookback/Review by Markdc
This is only a hunch, but if I were to ask you to name the greatest directors working in Hollywood today, I’m guessing Michael Bay would not make the cut; on the other hand, if I were to ask you who you thought were the worst directors working today, he would probably have a decent shot at topping your list. This is because Bay is, without doubt, one of the most hated filmmakers in the eyes of movie critics, if not by average moviegoers. Of the 15 films that he has directed thus far, only two enjoy an overall “fresh” rating from the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes—that is, they have a rating of at least 60 percent. And Bay’s highest-rated film, Ambulance (which is also his most recent), stands at 69 percent; this rating hardly indicates widespread acclaim. The news website The Daily Beast once called Bay “the Donald Trump of Cinema” and, no, that wasn’t meant as a compliment. Also, David Denby, film critic for the New Yorker, described the director as “stunningly, almost viciously, untalented.”
On a certain level, I can understand the hatred. After all, Bay has made some of the biggest cinematic stinkeroos I have ever seen. For example, I consider the first Transformers movie to be a dull, stupid, and noisy mess as well as an unforgivable crime perpetrated against the Eighties cartoon that I loved as a child, and I have absolutely no intention or desire to watch any of the sequels, which I gather are even worse than the original. Also, speaking as an avid reader of books about the Second World War, Pearl Harbor is the worst World War II movie I’ve ever seen and contains what must surely be one of the dumbest love triangles to ever grace the silver screen, with poor Kate Beckinsdale being relegated to the unenviable role of a female volleyball bouncing back and forth between two men. And watching—excuse me, enduring—Armageddon in the theater back in the summer of ’98 was a truly excruciating ordeal akin to someone boring a jackhammer into my brain for two-and-a-half hours.
With all that being said, I think Bay is a much better director than he’s given credit for. All of his films, including the bad ones, are well-made. If nothing else, he is a skilled craftsman, and when he is given a good script to work with, the results can be quite impressive. For instance, The Rock—the movie, not Dwayne Johnson—was one of the best action flicks of the 1990’s; the film is exciting, funny, and entertaining as hell. Also, The Island was a decent sci-fi thriller, albeit one that was highly derivative and placed too much emphasis on action. (Shocker, huh?) And Pain & Gain was one of the most interesting crime movies I’ve seen in the last decade.
And then there’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, based on the best-selling nonfiction book 13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi by Mitchell Zuckoff. The book and movie tell the story of the terrorist attacks that Islamic militants launched against the American diplomatic compound and nearby CIA base—known as “the Annex”—in Benghazi, Libya on the 11th anniversary of 9/11; the Benghazi attacks resulted in the deaths of four Americans. Like its literary source, Bay’s film focuses primarily on the six private contractors from the Global Response Staff (GRS) who made up the Annex Security Team. All of these men were military veterans who had served in elite units: former U.S. Navy SEALs Jack Silva and Tyrone “Rone” Woods, former U.S. Marines Mark “Oz” Geist, Dave “Boon” Benton, and John “Tig” Tiegen, and former U.S. Army Ranger Kris “Tanto” Paronto. Silva is the closest thing 13 Hours has to a protagonist, and a good portion of the movie is seen through his eyes.
The movie opens with a brief prologue showing the downfall of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and the resulting violence and chaos that convinced many countries to pull their diplomatic staff out of Libya—though the U.S. was determined not to be one of them. Silva arrives in Benghazi and is picked up at the airport by Rone, the leader of the Annex Security Team and a close personal friend and former comrade-in-arms. The pair drive to the Annex, where Silva meets the other GRS contractors and the CIA station chief, known only as “Bob.” Later, Silva and his GRS colleagues travel to the diplomatic compound—located about a mile from the Annex and known as the “Special Mission”—shortly before U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens is scheduled to arrive and meet Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) Agents Scott Wickland and Dave Ubben. Wickland and Ubben give their visitors a tour of the place, and the latter are alarmed to discover what they view as inadequate security measures.
After Stevens takes up his post at the Special Mission, it is attacked on September 11, 2012 by terrorists belonging to an Islamic extremist group aligned with Al-Qaeda called Ansar al-Sharia in Libya. Although the compound is nominally guarded by members of a local militia called the February 17th Martyrs Brigade, or 17-Feb for short, they are quickly overwhelmed and put up virtually no resistance. Wickland leads Stevens and his IT specialist, U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, into the compound’s safe room. The terrorists are unable to reach them, so they set the compound on fire in an attempt to force the Americans out. After Wickland contacts the Annex and issues several frantic pleas for help, the GRS team prepares to go to the Special Mission, but Bob, fearing that the Annex will be vulnerable to attack if his security contractors leave, orders them to “stand down.” The contractors grudgingly obey, at least for a little while, but they ultimately decide to defy the station chief’s orders and drive to the Special Mission.
Accompanied by a group of 17-Feb militiamen, the GRS contractors arrive at the burning compound and find Ubben and Wickland still alive but discover that Smith has died, and nobody appears to know where Stevens is. The GRS team looks for the ambassador while Ubben and Wickland take Smith’s corpse to the Annex. After carrying out several searches in the compound and coming up empty, the contractors drive to the Annex themselves. Expecting an attack, the CIA staff make desperate appeals to the U.S. government for military support. In response, Glen “Bub” Doherty, a GRS contractor in Tripoli and former Navy SEAL, and two Delta Force operators grab a bag of money and fly to Benghazi. After the GRS contractors at the Annex spend the entire night repelling assault after assault by Islamic terrorists, Doherty and his team arrive the next morning and prepare to take everybody to the airport. However, the terrorists launch a mortar attack, which kills Doherty and Woods and severely wounds Geist and Ubben. Just when it looks like all is lost, reinforcements from the GRS and a friendly Libyan militia arrive, and everyone from the Annex is transported safely to the airport and flown out of Benghazi. However, contrary to earlier news reports that Ambassador Stevens was found alive by Libyans and taken to a hospital, it is revealed that he is dead.
13 Hours received an overall negative reception from profession critics when it was released in the U.S. on January 15, 2016. However, several aspects of the film’s production, such as the acting and action scenes, received positive responses, and a number of critics noted that 13 Hours was a far more mature effort from Bay than his usual fare. For example, the Chicago Sun-Times’ Richard Roeper called the movie “a solid action thriller with well-choreographed battle sequences and strong work from the ensemble cast” but also said it was “lacking in nuance and occasionally plagued by corny dialogue.” Joe Dziemianowicz of the New York Daily News wrote that Bay “delivers a gripping, harrowing and heartfelt film about the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi” and praised the director for showing “restraint.” However, Roeper, Dziemianowicz, and others among their peers criticized 13 Hours for being one-sided in favor of its American characters and not delving into the thoughts, feelings, or motivations of the Libyan terrorists. As is often the case with Bay’s work, many critics had nothing nice to say about his Benghazi thriller. Jordan Hoffman of The Guardian, for example, called 13 Hours, “atrocious,” “a terrible movie,” and a “bizarre mix of war pornography and dour isolationist posturing.”
Average moviegoers largely stayed away from 13 Hours. The movie earned just $52.9 million at the domestic box office and $16.5 million overseas, for a global total of $69.4 million. Since Bay’s Benghazi thriller cost $50 million to produce, its paltry financial haul marked a significant—and rare—commercial failure for him; as of this writing, 13 Hours remains the lowest-grossing of all his movies. However, most of the people who saw 13 Hours liked the film enough to give it a cumulative “A” grade on CinemaScore. 13 Hours received a single Oscar nomination for Best Sound Mixing but lost to another war movie, Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge. Currently, Bay’s Benghazi film boasts a lousy 51 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
When it was first released, 13 Hours ignited a firestorm of controversy—and not just in the United States. In Libya, several prominent citizens of that nation criticized the movie for its “fanatical” and “ignorant” portrayal of the Libyan people and for omitting the efforts that some Libyans made to save Ambassador Stevens’ life. Stateside, 13 Hours was accused of containing factual errors—most notably with regard to the infamous “stand down” order that “Bob” issues to the members of the GRS team, who are itching to go to the aid of the Americans trapped at the diplomatic compound. The real-life CIA officer who was in charge of the Annex on the night of the terrorist attacks in Benghazi said to the Washington Post, “There never was a stand-down order. At no time did I ever second-guess that the team would depart.” However, a number of credible individuals, including one of the GRS contractors who defended the Annex, disputed this claim. And Mitchell Zuckoff, the author of the book 13 Hours, stood by the veracity of the “stand down” scene and said of the station chief: “It’s not credible what he’s claiming.”
Another flashpoint of controversy concerning Bay’s film was its perceived partisan politics. The director claimed 13 Hours was meant to be an apolitical cinematic treatment of the Benghazi attacks whose primary purpose was to showcase the heroism of the private security contractors who risked—and in some cases sacrificed—their lives to help their fellow Americans at the diplomatic compound and defend the CIA Annex from Islamic terrorists. But no matter what Bay did or said, there was probably no way his movie was going to be able to escape politics entirely. This was due to the fact that, from the very beginning, the response in the U.S. to the Benghazi attacks and their aftermath were fraught with partisanship. The attacks took place at the height of the 2012 presidential election between incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. GOP politicians and Conservative commentators accused members of the Obama administration, including the president himself and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, of taking actions before, during, and after the attacks that amounted to a gross dereliction of duty and a coverup. No less than 10 Benghazi-related investigations were carried out by the federal government, including six led by Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives. Furthermore, 13 Hours was released at the start of the 2016 election year when Secretary Clinton was running for the Democratic Party’s nomination, which she was widely expected to win. Although Obama and Clinton are never referenced directly in 13 Hours, the film makes the thinly-veiled claim that their administration didn’t do all it could have to help the besieged Americans in Benghazi. For example, there is a scene where Sonia Jillani, an undercover CIA agent at the Annex, calls the U.S. military and begs for air support. However, her desperate appeals are denied, and two of the contractors are later killed. 13 Hours appears to imply that those lives could have been spared if air support had arrived in time.
Some film critics agreed with Bay’s contention that his movie was apolitical. For instance, Variety’s Ted Johnson wrote that 13 Hours “steers clear of politics.” However, others weren’t buying it. In his scathing review for The Guardian, Jordan Hoffman wrote, “Don’t tell me this movie isn’t political. Michael Bay’s Benghazi bonanza is timed for release just before the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary. It’ll hit DVD in time for the general election.” Also, Paramount Pictures, the studio behind 13 Hours, seriously undercut Bay’s claim by launching an aggressive marketing campaign aimed at figures and organizations that were either on the American Right or perceived to be friendly to it, including Conservative media outlets, Evangelical churches, Republican politicians, and military servicemembers. Predictably, the reception that 13 Hours received from commentators on the political spectrum fell largely along partisan lines. For example, in a review for the Conservative New York Post, Kyle Smith called 13 Hours “powerful stuff” and went on to write that “Bay’s goal is to put you right in these men’s boots, to feel the heat, the fear, the fatigue, the weight of the weapons and the web of camaraderie. Sticking closely to the survivors’ accounts of what happened that night, Bay captures in impressive detail the dizzying chaos.” In contrast, Zach Beauchamp of Vox, a Progressive website, wrote in his review that “the movie lends credence to some of the most pernicious conspiracy theories about Benghazi out there.”
Before I give my own assessment of this film, I think it’s worth noting that 13 Hours was the latest of four movies about the War on Terror that were released nationwide during four consecutive Januarys. The others were Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, released in January 2013, Peter Berg’s Lone Survivor, released in January 2014, and Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, released in January 2015. (Note: Each of these three films had a limited December release before opening big the following month in order to qualify for the following year’s Academy Awards. The suits at Paramount opted not to do this for 13 Hours—no doubt because they knew that any movie which included the words “Directed by Michael Bay” would never be considered prime Oscar material.) All of them were commercial successes. So why did these movies succeed at the box office, and why did 13 Hours fail? One reason was because the first three movies all received positive reviews from professional critics, and Zero Dark Thirty and American Sniper were even nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. Also, 13 Hours didn’t feature any major stars in its cast, while Lone Survivor had Mark Wahlberg and American Sniper had Bradley Cooper. But perhaps the greatest reason was that, although all of these War on Terror-related films generated controversy of one kind or another, the first three could claim to be inherently nonpartisan. For example, Zero Dark Thirty was about the hunt for and killing of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden—something Americans from all parts of the political spectrum supported. And regardless of what one thought of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans of all stripes saluted the courage and sacrifice of military heroes like Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, the subject of Lone Survivor, and Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, the subject of American Sniper. But the partisan politics surrounding the Benghazi attacks ensured that certain segments of the population would be dissuaded from seeing 13 Hours, regardless of what the critics said about it.
While I don’t believe that 13 Hours is nearly as good as Zero Dark Thirty, which is—in this writer’s opinion—the greatest film ever made about the War on Terror, Bay’s movie is an excellent adaptation of Zuckoff’s source novel (which I loved) as well as his most important and underrated cinematic effort. I also like 13 Hours a lot more than either Lone Survivor or American Sniper. As I said above, Bay is a skilled craftsman, and the action sequences in 13 Hours are well-made, gripping, and make you feel as though you’re right there in Benghazi with the main characters. The cast is good, though—unlike in the cases of Zero Dark Thirty and American Sniper—none of the actors give what I would consider an Oscar-caliber performance. I especially like John Krasinski, who portrays Jack Silva, an ex-Navy SEAL and father of two little girls. Silva leaves his pregnant wife and children and travels to Libya for the considerable paycheck, but over the course of the movie, he learns what’s really important in his life. Krasinski is best known for his role as Jim Halpert, the witty assistant manager in the television sitcom The Office. I have never seen The Office, but if I had, I might be even more impressed with Krasinski’s performance in 13 Hours. The only actor from 13 Hours that I am familiar with is James Badge Dale, who plays Tyrone “Rone” Woods. I’ve seen Dale in several films, including The Departed and Only the Brave, but know him best for his performance as U.S. Marine rifleman Robert Leckie from the HBO miniseries The Pacific. Dale, Krasinski, and the other actors who play the private security contractors do a convincing job portraying these tough, courageous former special operators who fought against terrible odds and saved American lives.
I consider 13 Hours to be first and foremost a stirring cinematic tribute to American heroes, but I agree with the movie’s implicit claim that the Obama administration didn’t do enough to ensure the safety of the Americans at the diplomatic compound and CIA Annex in Benghazi both before and during the terrorist attacks. I also believe that prominent members of the administration, most notably Secretary of State Clinton and National Security Adviser Susan Rice, intentionally mislead the American public by pushing the false notion that the attacks were the result of “spontaneous” protests against an anti-Islamic video; 13 Hours charitably blames this bit of disinformation on “press reports.” (During the 2012 election, Obama, who had ordered the historic Navy SEAL raid which resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden, claimed that, under his leadership, Islamic terrorism was on the decline, and the Benghazi attacks seriously undercut this message.) However, I want to stress here that my love of 13 Hours stems from my appreciation of its cinematic virtues, not its politics. Although I am a Center-Right Conservative, I love several movies about the War on Terror that contain Leftwing political overtones, such as Paul Greengrass’s Green Zone and Gavin Hood’s Rendition.
By way of criticism, I think 13 Hours would have benefitted from displaying a bit more nuance by showing scenes from the viewpoint of the Muslim militants who assaulted the diplomatic compound and the Annex in Benghazi as opposed to portraying them simply as one-dimensional villains. (As awful as Pearl Harbor is, the movie at least grants audiences a view of the infamous air attack on the American naval base in Hawaii from the perspective of the Japanese.) And I would have liked a scene in 13 Hours that depicted the Libyans who tried to save the life of Christopher Stevens. Oh, and the subtitle “The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” is kind of dumb; Bay must have come to the same conclusion because that subtitle doesn’t even appear with the main title in the movie’s opening credits. However, these criticisms aside, I heartily recommend 13 Hours to anyone who appreciates an exciting and patriotic war movie that showcases American fortitude—and does not have a stupid love triangle in it. This film deserves far more love than it received from critics and audiences, and Bay would do himself a world of good if he devoted his time undertaking projects more like 13 Hours and less like Transformers.
Lookback/Review by Markdc
This is only a hunch, but if I were to ask you to name the greatest directors working in Hollywood today, I’m guessing Michael Bay would not make the cut; on the other hand, if I were to ask you who you thought were the worst directors working today, he would probably have a decent shot at topping your list. This is because Bay is, without doubt, one of the most hated filmmakers in the eyes of movie critics, if not by average moviegoers. Of the 15 films that he has directed thus far, only two enjoy an overall “fresh” rating from the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes—that is, they have a rating of at least 60 percent. And Bay’s highest-rated film, Ambulance (which is also his most recent), stands at 69 percent; this rating hardly indicates widespread acclaim. The news website The Daily Beast once called Bay “the Donald Trump of Cinema” and, no, that wasn’t meant as a compliment. Also, David Denby, film critic for the New Yorker, described the director as “stunningly, almost viciously, untalented.”
On a certain level, I can understand the hatred. After all, Bay has made some of the biggest cinematic stinkeroos I have ever seen. For example, I consider the first Transformers movie to be a dull, stupid, and noisy mess as well as an unforgivable crime perpetrated against the Eighties cartoon that I loved as a child, and I have absolutely no intention or desire to watch any of the sequels, which I gather are even worse than the original. Also, speaking as an avid reader of books about the Second World War, Pearl Harbor is the worst World War II movie I’ve ever seen and contains what must surely be one of the dumbest love triangles to ever grace the silver screen, with poor Kate Beckinsdale being relegated to the unenviable role of a female volleyball bouncing back and forth between two men. And watching—excuse me, enduring—Armageddon in the theater back in the summer of ’98 was a truly excruciating ordeal akin to someone boring a jackhammer into my brain for two-and-a-half hours.
With all that being said, I think Bay is a much better director than he’s given credit for. All of his films, including the bad ones, are well-made. If nothing else, he is a skilled craftsman, and when he is given a good script to work with, the results can be quite impressive. For instance, The Rock—the movie, not Dwayne Johnson—was one of the best action flicks of the 1990’s; the film is exciting, funny, and entertaining as hell. Also, The Island was a decent sci-fi thriller, albeit one that was highly derivative and placed too much emphasis on action. (Shocker, huh?) And Pain & Gain was one of the most interesting crime movies I’ve seen in the last decade.
And then there’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, based on the best-selling nonfiction book 13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi by Mitchell Zuckoff. The book and movie tell the story of the terrorist attacks that Islamic militants launched against the American diplomatic compound and nearby CIA base—known as “the Annex”—in Benghazi, Libya on the 11th anniversary of 9/11; the Benghazi attacks resulted in the deaths of four Americans. Like its literary source, Bay’s film focuses primarily on the six private contractors from the Global Response Staff (GRS) who made up the Annex Security Team. All of these men were military veterans who had served in elite units: former U.S. Navy SEALs Jack Silva and Tyrone “Rone” Woods, former U.S. Marines Mark “Oz” Geist, Dave “Boon” Benton, and John “Tig” Tiegen, and former U.S. Army Ranger Kris “Tanto” Paronto. Silva is the closest thing 13 Hours has to a protagonist, and a good portion of the movie is seen through his eyes.
The movie opens with a brief prologue showing the downfall of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and the resulting violence and chaos that convinced many countries to pull their diplomatic staff out of Libya—though the U.S. was determined not to be one of them. Silva arrives in Benghazi and is picked up at the airport by Rone, the leader of the Annex Security Team and a close personal friend and former comrade-in-arms. The pair drive to the Annex, where Silva meets the other GRS contractors and the CIA station chief, known only as “Bob.” Later, Silva and his GRS colleagues travel to the diplomatic compound—located about a mile from the Annex and known as the “Special Mission”—shortly before U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens is scheduled to arrive and meet Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) Agents Scott Wickland and Dave Ubben. Wickland and Ubben give their visitors a tour of the place, and the latter are alarmed to discover what they view as inadequate security measures.
After Stevens takes up his post at the Special Mission, it is attacked on September 11, 2012 by terrorists belonging to an Islamic extremist group aligned with Al-Qaeda called Ansar al-Sharia in Libya. Although the compound is nominally guarded by members of a local militia called the February 17th Martyrs Brigade, or 17-Feb for short, they are quickly overwhelmed and put up virtually no resistance. Wickland leads Stevens and his IT specialist, U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, into the compound’s safe room. The terrorists are unable to reach them, so they set the compound on fire in an attempt to force the Americans out. After Wickland contacts the Annex and issues several frantic pleas for help, the GRS team prepares to go to the Special Mission, but Bob, fearing that the Annex will be vulnerable to attack if his security contractors leave, orders them to “stand down.” The contractors grudgingly obey, at least for a little while, but they ultimately decide to defy the station chief’s orders and drive to the Special Mission.
Accompanied by a group of 17-Feb militiamen, the GRS contractors arrive at the burning compound and find Ubben and Wickland still alive but discover that Smith has died, and nobody appears to know where Stevens is. The GRS team looks for the ambassador while Ubben and Wickland take Smith’s corpse to the Annex. After carrying out several searches in the compound and coming up empty, the contractors drive to the Annex themselves. Expecting an attack, the CIA staff make desperate appeals to the U.S. government for military support. In response, Glen “Bub” Doherty, a GRS contractor in Tripoli and former Navy SEAL, and two Delta Force operators grab a bag of money and fly to Benghazi. After the GRS contractors at the Annex spend the entire night repelling assault after assault by Islamic terrorists, Doherty and his team arrive the next morning and prepare to take everybody to the airport. However, the terrorists launch a mortar attack, which kills Doherty and Woods and severely wounds Geist and Ubben. Just when it looks like all is lost, reinforcements from the GRS and a friendly Libyan militia arrive, and everyone from the Annex is transported safely to the airport and flown out of Benghazi. However, contrary to earlier news reports that Ambassador Stevens was found alive by Libyans and taken to a hospital, it is revealed that he is dead.
13 Hours received an overall negative reception from profession critics when it was released in the U.S. on January 15, 2016. However, several aspects of the film’s production, such as the acting and action scenes, received positive responses, and a number of critics noted that 13 Hours was a far more mature effort from Bay than his usual fare. For example, the Chicago Sun-Times’ Richard Roeper called the movie “a solid action thriller with well-choreographed battle sequences and strong work from the ensemble cast” but also said it was “lacking in nuance and occasionally plagued by corny dialogue.” Joe Dziemianowicz of the New York Daily News wrote that Bay “delivers a gripping, harrowing and heartfelt film about the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi” and praised the director for showing “restraint.” However, Roeper, Dziemianowicz, and others among their peers criticized 13 Hours for being one-sided in favor of its American characters and not delving into the thoughts, feelings, or motivations of the Libyan terrorists. As is often the case with Bay’s work, many critics had nothing nice to say about his Benghazi thriller. Jordan Hoffman of The Guardian, for example, called 13 Hours, “atrocious,” “a terrible movie,” and a “bizarre mix of war pornography and dour isolationist posturing.”
Average moviegoers largely stayed away from 13 Hours. The movie earned just $52.9 million at the domestic box office and $16.5 million overseas, for a global total of $69.4 million. Since Bay’s Benghazi thriller cost $50 million to produce, its paltry financial haul marked a significant—and rare—commercial failure for him; as of this writing, 13 Hours remains the lowest-grossing of all his movies. However, most of the people who saw 13 Hours liked the film enough to give it a cumulative “A” grade on CinemaScore. 13 Hours received a single Oscar nomination for Best Sound Mixing but lost to another war movie, Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge. Currently, Bay’s Benghazi film boasts a lousy 51 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
When it was first released, 13 Hours ignited a firestorm of controversy—and not just in the United States. In Libya, several prominent citizens of that nation criticized the movie for its “fanatical” and “ignorant” portrayal of the Libyan people and for omitting the efforts that some Libyans made to save Ambassador Stevens’ life. Stateside, 13 Hours was accused of containing factual errors—most notably with regard to the infamous “stand down” order that “Bob” issues to the members of the GRS team, who are itching to go to the aid of the Americans trapped at the diplomatic compound. The real-life CIA officer who was in charge of the Annex on the night of the terrorist attacks in Benghazi said to the Washington Post, “There never was a stand-down order. At no time did I ever second-guess that the team would depart.” However, a number of credible individuals, including one of the GRS contractors who defended the Annex, disputed this claim. And Mitchell Zuckoff, the author of the book 13 Hours, stood by the veracity of the “stand down” scene and said of the station chief: “It’s not credible what he’s claiming.”
Another flashpoint of controversy concerning Bay’s film was its perceived partisan politics. The director claimed 13 Hours was meant to be an apolitical cinematic treatment of the Benghazi attacks whose primary purpose was to showcase the heroism of the private security contractors who risked—and in some cases sacrificed—their lives to help their fellow Americans at the diplomatic compound and defend the CIA Annex from Islamic terrorists. But no matter what Bay did or said, there was probably no way his movie was going to be able to escape politics entirely. This was due to the fact that, from the very beginning, the response in the U.S. to the Benghazi attacks and their aftermath were fraught with partisanship. The attacks took place at the height of the 2012 presidential election between incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. GOP politicians and Conservative commentators accused members of the Obama administration, including the president himself and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, of taking actions before, during, and after the attacks that amounted to a gross dereliction of duty and a coverup. No less than 10 Benghazi-related investigations were carried out by the federal government, including six led by Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives. Furthermore, 13 Hours was released at the start of the 2016 election year when Secretary Clinton was running for the Democratic Party’s nomination, which she was widely expected to win. Although Obama and Clinton are never referenced directly in 13 Hours, the film makes the thinly-veiled claim that their administration didn’t do all it could have to help the besieged Americans in Benghazi. For example, there is a scene where Sonia Jillani, an undercover CIA agent at the Annex, calls the U.S. military and begs for air support. However, her desperate appeals are denied, and two of the contractors are later killed. 13 Hours appears to imply that those lives could have been spared if air support had arrived in time.
Some film critics agreed with Bay’s contention that his movie was apolitical. For instance, Variety’s Ted Johnson wrote that 13 Hours “steers clear of politics.” However, others weren’t buying it. In his scathing review for The Guardian, Jordan Hoffman wrote, “Don’t tell me this movie isn’t political. Michael Bay’s Benghazi bonanza is timed for release just before the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary. It’ll hit DVD in time for the general election.” Also, Paramount Pictures, the studio behind 13 Hours, seriously undercut Bay’s claim by launching an aggressive marketing campaign aimed at figures and organizations that were either on the American Right or perceived to be friendly to it, including Conservative media outlets, Evangelical churches, Republican politicians, and military servicemembers. Predictably, the reception that 13 Hours received from commentators on the political spectrum fell largely along partisan lines. For example, in a review for the Conservative New York Post, Kyle Smith called 13 Hours “powerful stuff” and went on to write that “Bay’s goal is to put you right in these men’s boots, to feel the heat, the fear, the fatigue, the weight of the weapons and the web of camaraderie. Sticking closely to the survivors’ accounts of what happened that night, Bay captures in impressive detail the dizzying chaos.” In contrast, Zach Beauchamp of Vox, a Progressive website, wrote in his review that “the movie lends credence to some of the most pernicious conspiracy theories about Benghazi out there.”
Before I give my own assessment of this film, I think it’s worth noting that 13 Hours was the latest of four movies about the War on Terror that were released nationwide during four consecutive Januarys. The others were Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, released in January 2013, Peter Berg’s Lone Survivor, released in January 2014, and Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, released in January 2015. (Note: Each of these three films had a limited December release before opening big the following month in order to qualify for the following year’s Academy Awards. The suits at Paramount opted not to do this for 13 Hours—no doubt because they knew that any movie which included the words “Directed by Michael Bay” would never be considered prime Oscar material.) All of them were commercial successes. So why did these movies succeed at the box office, and why did 13 Hours fail? One reason was because the first three movies all received positive reviews from professional critics, and Zero Dark Thirty and American Sniper were even nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. Also, 13 Hours didn’t feature any major stars in its cast, while Lone Survivor had Mark Wahlberg and American Sniper had Bradley Cooper. But perhaps the greatest reason was that, although all of these War on Terror-related films generated controversy of one kind or another, the first three could claim to be inherently nonpartisan. For example, Zero Dark Thirty was about the hunt for and killing of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden—something Americans from all parts of the political spectrum supported. And regardless of what one thought of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans of all stripes saluted the courage and sacrifice of military heroes like Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, the subject of Lone Survivor, and Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, the subject of American Sniper. But the partisan politics surrounding the Benghazi attacks ensured that certain segments of the population would be dissuaded from seeing 13 Hours, regardless of what the critics said about it.
While I don’t believe that 13 Hours is nearly as good as Zero Dark Thirty, which is—in this writer’s opinion—the greatest film ever made about the War on Terror, Bay’s movie is an excellent adaptation of Zuckoff’s source novel (which I loved) as well as his most important and underrated cinematic effort. I also like 13 Hours a lot more than either Lone Survivor or American Sniper. As I said above, Bay is a skilled craftsman, and the action sequences in 13 Hours are well-made, gripping, and make you feel as though you’re right there in Benghazi with the main characters. The cast is good, though—unlike in the cases of Zero Dark Thirty and American Sniper—none of the actors give what I would consider an Oscar-caliber performance. I especially like John Krasinski, who portrays Jack Silva, an ex-Navy SEAL and father of two little girls. Silva leaves his pregnant wife and children and travels to Libya for the considerable paycheck, but over the course of the movie, he learns what’s really important in his life. Krasinski is best known for his role as Jim Halpert, the witty assistant manager in the television sitcom The Office. I have never seen The Office, but if I had, I might be even more impressed with Krasinski’s performance in 13 Hours. The only actor from 13 Hours that I am familiar with is James Badge Dale, who plays Tyrone “Rone” Woods. I’ve seen Dale in several films, including The Departed and Only the Brave, but know him best for his performance as U.S. Marine rifleman Robert Leckie from the HBO miniseries The Pacific. Dale, Krasinski, and the other actors who play the private security contractors do a convincing job portraying these tough, courageous former special operators who fought against terrible odds and saved American lives.
I consider 13 Hours to be first and foremost a stirring cinematic tribute to American heroes, but I agree with the movie’s implicit claim that the Obama administration didn’t do enough to ensure the safety of the Americans at the diplomatic compound and CIA Annex in Benghazi both before and during the terrorist attacks. I also believe that prominent members of the administration, most notably Secretary of State Clinton and National Security Adviser Susan Rice, intentionally mislead the American public by pushing the false notion that the attacks were the result of “spontaneous” protests against an anti-Islamic video; 13 Hours charitably blames this bit of disinformation on “press reports.” (During the 2012 election, Obama, who had ordered the historic Navy SEAL raid which resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden, claimed that, under his leadership, Islamic terrorism was on the decline, and the Benghazi attacks seriously undercut this message.) However, I want to stress here that my love of 13 Hours stems from my appreciation of its cinematic virtues, not its politics. Although I am a Center-Right Conservative, I love several movies about the War on Terror that contain Leftwing political overtones, such as Paul Greengrass’s Green Zone and Gavin Hood’s Rendition.
By way of criticism, I think 13 Hours would have benefitted from displaying a bit more nuance by showing scenes from the viewpoint of the Muslim militants who assaulted the diplomatic compound and the Annex in Benghazi as opposed to portraying them simply as one-dimensional villains. (As awful as Pearl Harbor is, the movie at least grants audiences a view of the infamous air attack on the American naval base in Hawaii from the perspective of the Japanese.) And I would have liked a scene in 13 Hours that depicted the Libyans who tried to save the life of Christopher Stevens. Oh, and the subtitle “The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” is kind of dumb; Bay must have come to the same conclusion because that subtitle doesn’t even appear with the main title in the movie’s opening credits. However, these criticisms aside, I heartily recommend 13 Hours to anyone who appreciates an exciting and patriotic war movie that showcases American fortitude—and does not have a stupid love triangle in it. This film deserves far more love than it received from critics and audiences, and Bay would do himself a world of good if he devoted his time undertaking projects more like 13 Hours and less like Transformers.