"I've had just about enough of this 2012 Alamo bullshit," says one of the besieged CIA security contractors in Michael Bay's 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers Of Benghazi. And I know how he feels, considering how often it reminds me of every other movie of its kind, from Black Hawk Down through Lone Survivor, American Sniper, and such John Wayne flag-wavers as Sands Of Iwo Jima and – ah, there it is – The Alamo.
13 Hours is an account of the 2012 attacks by Islamist militants on a US diplomatic facility in Libya, which killed four people. The film was branded rightwing before it even hit cinemas, firstly by the never-ending Benghazi hearings chaired by Congressman Trey Gowdy and secondly by the publicists at Paramount Pictures, who secured quotes screaming "masterpiece" and so on from conservative rags such as the Weekly Standard and the Daily Caller that I wouldn't depend on for the time of day, let alone a movie review. None of that makes 13 Hours a terrible movie.
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If I'd avoided all mention of the event itself in 2012[5] or the mendacious media coverage of it since, I wouldn't notice anything amiss in the movie about the "controversial" and apparently non-existent "stand-down order" alleged to have doomed ambassador Christopher Stevens. Hillary Clinton's name is never heard, Obama rates one mention as "Potus", and I left the theatre feeling no special outrage about whatever seems to have envenomed the Republicans on the Benghazi committee and the screamers on Fox News. I did, however, see a half-decent war film, and the calmest movie Michael Bay has ever made.
I know, a bullet-riddled siege movie is an unlikely contender for calmest anything, but this is Bay we're talking about. After his quadrilogy of enervating toy movies and his over-the-top some-kinda-demented-masterpiece Pain & Gain, Bay does seem to have adjusted himself to the needs of the war movie in ways he couldn't manage with Pearl Harbor in 2001. His characters are macho but human, and despite a cast that is uniformed, uniformly bearded and often hard to tell apart, he has kept things comprehensible and moving relentlessly forward.
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For all his trademark excess and fondness for machinery over people, Bay is a gifted film-maker driven to excite us, and he has found a degree of sobriety here, even if he never lets up. His cast, mostly TV-familiar, functions smoothly as a unit, and I think the luckless John Krasinski has finally outdistanced Jim Halpert of The Office (his rival in love, Roy – David Denman – is on the team, too). Dependable James Badge Dale and Paolo Schreiber (Orange Is The New Black[8]'s "Pornstache") also make convincing team members, while David Costabile (Breaking Bad[9]'s Gale) does his wormy best as the nervous State Department honcho whose decisions don't help anyone.
As a lefty, I'm honour-bound to despise this movie, but I just can't. It deserves its place among the movies I opened with, and at the top of Michael Bay's catalogue.
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers Of Benghazi is out Friday 29 January
References
- ^ 13 Hours: Michael Bay's Benghazi movie and 'the American Way' (www.theguardian.com)
- ^ an account of the 2012 attacks by Islamist militants on a US diplomatic facility in Libya (www.theguardian.com)
- ^ never-ending Benghazi hearings (www.theguardian.com)
- ^ conservative rags such as the Weekly Standard and the Daily Caller (money.cnn.com)
- ^ the event itself in 2012 (www.theguardian.com)
- ^ he couldn't manage with Pearl Harbor in 2001 (www.theguardian.com)
- ^ 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi review – Michael Bay plays politico for the Fox News crowd (www.th eguardian.com)
- ^ Orange Is The New Black (www.theguardian.com)
- ^ Breaking Bad (www.theguardian.com)
