AP: How is this movie not political? It’s a comparatively restrained effort on Bay’s part (don’t worry, there is plenty of action) and I have warring and contradicting feelings on. I knew there was an attack on the embassy in Benghazi and that the Ambassador was killed. Contradictions, I tell ya.
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“Oh, Pat. I know it must be so hard”. Or nearly always – in a few sequences he slows things down so we can get teary family tableaux from the home front.
Instead, 13 Hours is a bit more passive-aggressive: It takes a single character, the Central Intelligence Agency station chief, and makes him the all-purpose stand-in for Obama/Hillary/”people from Harvard and Yale”. There’s a pink elephant sitting in the room when you’ve got the most powerful country in the world, bases. But I think it’s safe to say that Bay really tried, and, to a limited degree, he succeeded. It’s an F16 flight, its 50 minutes – flight time overhead is 30 minutes.
“The movie focuses on the actions of a small group of operators and soldiers, consisting of 2 active-duty JSOC operators and five Central Intelligence Agency personnel along with a small contingent of Libyan forces”. I’m not pointing fingers, I’m just giving the facts, I’m showing what was out there.
Again, a semblance of credit is due to Bay for trying to tell a story, even as simplistic as it is presented. And this is a classic nightmare story.
Krasinski doesn’t go out of his way to show off his new body in the movie, aside from one shirtless shot toward the end. It’s a movie that honors all first responders, from firemen to policemen to the men and women in the military that do this. Hillary Clinton’s name is never uttered, and the owner of the blame for the sorry state of security is never specified. No one actually enjoys this, even if Michael Bay does present the chaos with bombastic Hollywood grandeur.
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The perception among many conservatives has been that if the film becomes a hit it could serve to convict the Democratic presidential front-runner in the court of public opinion in a way that more than 10 hours of her testimony before the GOP-led House Benghazi Committee failed to, but if the movie is viewed as little more than a vehicle for right-wing views, that may be what Box Office Mojo calls a “tough bet to make”. “We just helped arrange the movie theater”, spokesman Kyle Hall said. Now, the problem is that many of these sequences are hindered by dizzying levels of shaky cam, constant quick-cut editing destroying any chance viewers will have of catching their bearings on the situation, rocket launchers going off from every direction, vehicles exploding left and right, and doors exploding open in slow motion, but maybe the frenetic approach is intentional. “You don’t hear it on the talking points on the news”, Bay continued.
