Sunday, January 17, 2016

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

Maybe it's better for me that I don't make it big in Hollywood because if I ever did, I would just turn into the black screenwriter version of Michael Bay. I would find every possible excuse to write in a scene for hot flight attendants, curvy waitresses, and busty mechanics! And they would be shirtless in almost every scene they're in, wearing bras of course, in case the studio needed the film to be PG-13. Each scene would filmed in super slow motion as they seductively served you nuts, sausage and eggs, or fixed your tailpipe; and I would write myself in as an extra for almost every one of these magnificent moments. Now tell me you wouldn't pay to see this! Ok so maybe you wouldn't and maybe these shots wouldn't even make the final cut but I'd sure as hell would have a damn good time rehearsing them!

Well in between the shirtless hotties, Bay does provide us with some fairly decent and over the top action. He may turn the cheese factor up to 10 with all of his contrived shots of Americana and his terrible attempts at humor (see the racist cars in Transformers) but you can't deny that his films can be fun to watch from time to time. Now don't get me wrong, I hate all of the forgettable Transformers movies and of course Pearl Harbor, and then Armageddon...well now that I think about it, I don't really like Michael Bay at all. But if you look at Bad Boys and The Rock, he has shown us that he has the ability to make a good movie if he's actually motivated to do so.

Well thankfully for us, 13 Hours is basically a real life version of The Rock as it gives us an inside look into what is supposed to have taken place during the attack on the American Embassy and the secret C.I.A. compound in Libya. The story puts its focus on the former soldiers who were hired to guard the C.I.A. complex and it's agents while they ran their covert operations in the midst of a coup.

You see all of the red tape they have to go through just to get protection for one another and the local people that have been hired to work alongside of them look no different from their enemies as neither of them are wearing uniforms. This plays a huge role later on the film once they come under attack as they have no idea who their friend or their foe is while attempting the save the lives of an American ambassador and his small security team.

Since this is based off of a true story, Bay treats it with as much respect as he possibly can. There are no scenes where he even remotely comes close to glorifying the violence that's taking place and even though you can't help but find yourself rooting for the Americans, you don't really feel good about the deaths of the locals either when they take place. The shoot out scenes are unbelievably intense as gunfire and rockets are seemingly coming from everywhere. And Bay, as he's known to do, spares no expense in regards to the action set pieces.

Now he's still the Bay that we've all grown to know and hate as he includes plenty of scenes where he attempts to add his typical melodrama; and he of course includes needless shots of sweaty, shirtless men who just so happen to be standing in the hot sun. But thankfully the tight action that takes place in it is more prominent than any of the other nonsense I just mentioned, so they wind up sticking with you more than anything else as you leave the theater.

I purposely took an extra day or two to write this review just so I could be sure that I wasn't talking myself into a actually giving Bay a good review. But alas, I have to give credit where credit is due, I give 13 Hours a solid rating of FRESH!

No comments:

Post a Comment