Respond to these rapid questions in our 13 Hours quiz and we will tell you which 13 Hours character you are. Play it now.
Michael Bay has done for the attack on Benghazi and those who fought and died there what he did for the attack on Pearl Harbor in “Pearl Harbor”—that is, he has reduced the seriousness of the event and the sacrifices made to another exercise in the kind of slick, soulless excess that is virtually undistinguishable, both stylistically and dramatically, from the rest of his filmography.
Former Navy SEAL Jack Silva (John Krasinski) arrives in Benghazi to work as a private consultant on a security detail for a CIA outpost alongside old friend Tyrone “Rone” Woods (Tyrone “Rone” Woods), who was killed in the attack. The film is based on the best-selling account by Mitchell Zuckoff (with the participation of five survivors of the attack) (James Badge Dale). The job isn’t ideal: Benghazi is one of the most dangerous places on the planet, and he is separated from his wife and two young daughters. In addition, all of the official CIA people under whom he is working, particularly outpost chief Bob (David Costabile), are constantly reminding all of the security guys that they are the ones who are performing the critical work. It generates more income than staying at home and working as a real estate agent does.
Early in September 2012, U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens (Matt Letscher) arrives at the diplomatic compound and insists on staying for the duration of his visit. The security consultants Silva and Rone, as well as the other members of the team who are inspecting the premises prior to the arrival of Ambassador Stevens, quickly realize that the protection provided is completely inadequate. They are even more outraged when they discover that a once-secret meeting has been turned into a public event, thereby informing everyone in the dangerously unstable region of Stevens’ presence. In spite of this, the CIA agents and the security guards at the diplomatic compound dismiss their warnings and insist that they are in complete command of the situation.
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Stevens is inside the compound when it is attacked by a heavily-armed mob on September 11th, who quickly storms the building and even sets it ablaze in an attempt to force Stevens to leave. Silva, Rone, and four other security officers on the scene—Kris “Tanto” Paronto (Pablo Schreiber), Dave “Boon” Benton (David Denman), John “Tig” Tiegan (Dominic Fumusa), and Mark “Oz” Geist (Max Martini)—can see what’s going on and are ready to rush over and assist, but the main CIA officer orders them to stand down. Silva, Rone, and Eventually, the six of them decide to defy him and enter the compound without permission, and he continues to repeat the order. Despite fending off waves of attackers and successfully removing a couple of people from the burning building, they are unable to locate Stevens before returning to their base. It is at this point that the CIA base becomes the new target of attack, and the guys, along with a small group of others, are forced to defend the compound and those inside on their own, while calls for air support are ignored and a potential rescue force is stuck on the tarmac in Tripoli, bogged down by bureaucratic red tape.
13 Hours Quiz
A film about Benghazi might have turned out like Ridley Scott’s “Black Hawk Down,” which is another account of a mission in an unstable country that went horribly wrong. But the right filmmaker might have turned out something like that. It was Scott’s film that documented the horrors of what happened, the heroism of those who fought, and the combination of mistakes, misjudgments, and plain bad luck that occurred along the way…. Unfortunately, Michael Bay has never been known as a director with a keen sense of nuance, and as a result, he tells the story in the most simplistic manner possible. As simplistic and simple-minded as it is possible to be, Chuck Hogan’s screenplay is a joy to watch. Our six heroes are near-gods who can do no wrong, while the government operatives on display are cartoonishly dumb, obnoxious and narrow-minded in their thinking. To get viewers to understand what motivates our heroes to put themselves in harm’s way, he not only has one of them read aloud from Joseph Campbell’s “The Power of Myth,” but he also has that moment repeated as a flashback near the end of the film—which is also pretty much the extent of the character development. Indeed, the best writing in the film appears in a clip from the film “Tropic Thunder,” and given the nature of that film—a group of actors heading off to film a war story that turns out to be less accurate than advertised—its inclusion in the film comes across as either the sickest joke imaginable or a bizarre bit of meta-commentary that was somehow slipped into the mix.
Also, you will find out which character are you in this 13 Hours quiz.
As for Bay, he approaches the material in the same way he approaches everything else: as if it were a hyper-violent video game with a lot of flash and little substance. When you think back to “Black Hawk Down,” you’ll remember how brilliantly Scott evoked the confusion of what happened while still laying everything out in a way that allowed viewers to follow along and find order in the chaos. “13 Hours” evokes a great deal of confusion, but it is less a fog of war and more a fog created by a filmmaker who appears incapable of adhering to the most basic rules of film grammar when the situation calls for it. One could argue that Bay is attempting to create a “you are there” experience that immerses viewers in the chaos and keeps them as clueless as the character, but he simply lacks the necessary skills to pull it off. He employs his usual arsenal of rapid edits, slow-motion, and showy special effects (including a sequence following a mortar as it descends from the skies to hit its target that appears to be Bay’s homage to a similar shot in his own “Pearl Harbor”) to get an immediate reaction from the audience (including one sequence in which the American flag is machine-gunned in slow motion that feels like the longest sustained shot in the film) but fails to provide viewers with anything eloquent As terrible as the action scenes are, the supposedly character-driven sequences are even worse—a scene in which Silva receives some news from his wife and children via video chat while the family is at a McDonald’s drive-thru is so poorly handled in every way that it makes the scene in Bay’s “Armageddon” with Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, and some animal crackers appear positively subtle by comparison.
About the quiz
Simply put, “13 Hours” is a dreadful film, and as I sat through it, I tried to imagine what kind of audience would actually be interested in watching it. I came up with nothing. It will be dismissed by those of the liberal persuasion because it presents elements that have been hotly contested or flat-out denied (such as the stand-down orders) as unquestionable facts. Conservatives may be disappointed that the film does not go far enough in linking Hillary Clinton to the events depicted; unless I missed something, she is never specifically mentioned in the film. While it succeeds as an action film and as a historical document, it is a bombastic and wholly inauthentic mess in which the men whose actions and sacrifices it is supposed to commemorate show precious little interest in the men who are the subject of the film. There is a good and interesting movie waiting to be made about the tragic events in Benghazi and the political fallout that followed them, but “13 Hours” is most definitely not that movie.Also, you must try to play this 13 Hours quiz.
For more personality quizzes check this: Barbershop The Next Cut Quiz.
