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 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi 

What grade would you give this film?
A 0%  0%  [ 0 ]
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C 60%  60%  [ 3 ]
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Total votes : 5

 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi 
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Post 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

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13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi is a 2016 American biographical action war thriller film directed and co-produced by Michael Bay and written by Chuck Hogan, based on the 2013 book 13 Hours by Mitchell Zuckoff. It is based on the story of the six members of a security team who fought to defend the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, after a terrorist attack on September 11, 2012. The film stars James Badge Dale, John Krasinski, Max Martini, Toby Stephens, Pablo Schreiber, David Denman, Dominic Fumusa, and Freddie Stroma. Filming began on April 27, 2015 in Malta. The film is scheduled to be released on January 15, 2016, by Paramount Pictures.


Thu Jan 14, 2016 11:21 pm
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why so serious?
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Post Re: 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
Unlike everything else he has done, which I have found to be either deliriously enjoyable or unbearably overblown, Michael Bay's 13 Hours is just... there. Bay's direction of action is surprisingly but effectively restrained, as he plays up the visceral and chaotic nature of the standoff without much use of the distracting flourishes that defined his Transformers and Bad Boys films. It's easily the most grounded and focused action film he has ever made. However, where the film falls short is its characters. Despite taking a solid half-hour to develop several of the characters who play key roles in the action later in the film, said development rarely feels relevant to these characters once the gunfire begins, and as such, it lacks the immediacy and urgency that made other recent chronicles of military conflicts feel so emotionally potent.

C+

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Sat Jan 16, 2016 6:02 pm
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Post Re: 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
Odd watching a Bay film without an annoying and unfunny comic relief type.

Pretty good film but it can be hard to tell who is whom. Everyone is large and bearded with helmets.

B+


Sat Jan 16, 2016 11:14 pm
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Post Re: 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
Surprisingly understated for Michael Bay (until it lays on the jingoism way too thick in the last 15 minutes), 13 Hours is a mostly effective action movie that wisely sidesteps politics. Character development is half-hearted at best, but a buffed up John Krasinski is effective in the largest role. B-


Sat Jan 16, 2016 11:21 pm
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Post Re: 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
Michael Bay's finest and most grating attributes are both well-represented in 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, a high-octane dramatization of a terrorist assault on a U.S. compound in Libya, the violent incident which resulted in the death of diplomat J. Christopher Stevens and others on September 11, 2012. The film turns in particular on retired military employed by the CIA as security and their Alamo-style stand against an overnight siege.

No film with this subject is apolitical, and there are more than enough cowardly, inept civilians and grounded F-16s to arouse viewers sure Hillary relaxed and e-mailed while Libya burned (before initiating a cover-up), but it is not too hard to believe Bay's primary interest is indulging his long-standing fetish for jingoism rather than influencing the Iowa caucus. He is a peculiar and skilled craftsman who pushes bodies, bullets, cars, and fires in motion to the point of abstraction, disorienting and enthralling the audience with pictorial and sonic fury. The digital photography here is fast-paced, intimate, vividly saturated, and, in the best sense, extremely chaotic and vicious.

Unfortunately, the pummeling is rather one-note and becomes numbing over the course of a nearly two-and-half-hour feature length. Bay is a first-rate technician with an underdeveloped understanding of building suspense and a reluctance to vary the tempo once established. And there is zero historical cogency on display—no one who enters here open-minded will leave the film even slightly understanding the Benghazi ordeal in regard to motive, timeline, etc.—nor is there a single interesting character: the American protagonists become a blur of bearded no-time-to-bleed machismo (even their pining for their respective homes, wives, and children is interchangeably heavy-handed and corny), and the Libyans only register as a feral horde.

C+

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Sun Jan 31, 2016 2:50 am
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Post Re: 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
There is a shot late in this film of flight attendants' gorgeous, perfectly lit legs. One can almost hear Michael Bay's frenzied interior monologue, "No, Michael! You cannot linger! This is your sad, serious movie!"

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Sun Jan 31, 2016 2:52 am
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Post Re: 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
I liked it, but it's easily the weakest of these recent middle-east war films. Bay does a capable job with the direction and the action sequences, but it's surprising how restrained he is here aswell. The Bay humor is definitely there, but it's not over the top and while the cast is solid their are no big standouts. John Krasinski was very believable in his role though.


Wed May 25, 2016 3:50 pm
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Post Re: 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
This isn't bad, but for a military action film from Michael Bay I expected something better. The siege of their compound didn't really go on for long. I was expecting a final assault where they really had to hold on, but it was over rather quickly after one attempt. Krasinski is also a little miscast here. He's built himself up well, looks the part, but he's too soft to stand on the same tough-as-nails man on a mission ground as, say, Pablo Schreiber, Max Martini, even James Badge Dale. These are real men. Krasinski does well, but he's just not quite there. They should have cast someone like Gerard Butler. I know they wanted someone a little soft for the family-back-home scenes but these are so scarce I hardly saw the point.

Other than that, I thought the film was good. I gave me my machismo fix. We need more films like this. They used to be all the rage 10-15 years ago.

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