Review of 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016) by Bobby B — 29 Jan 2016

The action sequences as you would expect from Michael Bay are amazing, great, powerful. The tactics by the enemy attackers are also revealed in thorough detail. But the critics are right on this one.

Aside from the action, the script is full of thinly veiled political jabs, horribly predictable banter between the hired guns, the stuff you'd expect to hear in the background playing a shooters game on 360.

And the obligatory calls and FaceTime scenes to the families back home are so contrived and so utterly staged I felt like those were the best times to get up to take a piss.

The events leading up were very confusing, actions by bad guys highly implausible (guns dealer) and all of the characters had parts to play but were not complex in the way a story and events like this should be portrayed.

The blonde is vehemently against the grunt like gunman, and then becomes a fierce defender of them. the CIA station chief is a complete and total pencil pusher who is adamant on staying there after the sh_t hit the fan and one little word of 'get in the f__king truck' changed his mind immediately and 20 minutes later he has something poignant to say to that warrior.

The whole firefight was extremely engaging but everything else around it felt staged, from the very first ride in Benghazi with the two main guns for hire. The dialogue at the roadblock going into the tunnel was ripped right out of an early eighties bad paramilitary movie.

Even Stallone in a new Expendables script would look at those lines and say 'Nobody says that sh_t'.