13 Hours: The Defenders in Bengazi

Hello everybody! For this week’s “New Movie Show” we have the new war epic 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Bengazi.

13 HOURS: THE SECRET SOLDIERS OF BENGAZI

DIRECTED BY: Michael Bay 

STARRING:  James Badge Dale, John Krasinski, Max Martini, Dominic Fumusa, Pablo Schreiber, David Denman, Toby Stephens, Freddie Stroma

GENRE: Biographical Political Action

YEAR: 2016

COUNTRY: United States

In 2012, Benghazi, Libya is named one of the most dangerous places in the world, and countries have pulled their embassies out of the country in fear of an attack by militants. The United States, however, keeps a Special Mission (Embassy) open in the city. Less than a mile away is a not-so-secret CIA outpost called “The Annex”, which is protected by a team of Private Military Contractors Global Response Staff made up of former special operations personnel. New to the detail is Jack Da Silva (Krasinski), who arrives in Benghazi and is picked up by Tyrone S. “Rone” Woods (Dale), a member of the team and a personal friend of Da Silva. Arriving at the Annex, Da Silva is introduced to the rest of the team and the chief (Costabile), who constantly gives the team strict reminders to never engage the citizens to avoid conflict with possible militants in the area.

Do you need yet another action-packed modern military flick like Black Hawk Down? That is exactly what you get with 13 Hours. That is definitely not a drawback though, as 13 Hours is an enjoyable flick through and through, The main cast did a superb job with their portrayals from the source material. I was pleasantly surprised since I thought that it would be another instance like The Martian, where the
character was much more interesting  in the book,  Beyond that, I really enjoyed the authentic feel that 13 Hours achieved. This particularly showed in the interactions between the locals and the Americans, establishing the main struggle of the language  barrier.

Despite this, 13 Hours has plenty of flaws. The film is not as action-packed as it was shown in the trailer. Then again the trailers always show the best parts. Even between each firefight there were many moments that just had the characters talking among each other…as if waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the most part I don’t have a problem with this…I just felt their should have been less moments
for a film essentially similar to Black Hawk Down.

PROS:

• Main cast performances.
• Loyalty to the source material.
• Epic firefights

CONS:

• Uninteresting lulls in action.
• Boring dialogue.

SCORE: 7.3 / 10

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