'13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi' - Movie Review

'13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi'
A; Action-drama-thriller
Director: Michael Bay
Cast: John Krasinski, James Badge Dale, Pablo Schreiber, Max Martini, Toby Stephens
Rating:

This film by Michael Bay basically demonstrates his ability to turn a true event into an exhibition of savage action artistry without really getting into the soul and true reasoning behind the experience. Based on the 2014 non-fiction journalistic account of the attack of the CIA Annex in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012 which killed Americans. The book was written by Mitchell Zuckoff with the Annex security team and details the entire experience including the American Ops that was deployed to protect the survivors.

While the thrills are all well orchestrated and deployed in full VFX vigor, the narrative suffers from the unidirectional approach towards the understanding of the event. The excess on display here does to events of Benghazi much like what Bay's ‘Pearl Harbour' did to that catastrophic event in history - trivialized for easy audience consumption. This film fails to make you realize the seriousness of the attack, the repercussions of it or the shaking up of the world order that followed as a direct result of that assault. Every moment is reduced to exhibitionist thrill seeking and makes it all the more meaningless because of it!