I’m going to level with you:Michael Bayirks me, in a major sort of way. It’s not a question of not being able to “handle” his perspective, or his insistence on depicting American soldiers as nothing but saintly martyrs and heroes. It’s how watered-down his supposedly “extreme” movies end up being, especially when he decides to take on real-life events, such as the violent tragedies that unfurled in Benghazi in 2012 in the upcoming13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. Given, the film is a long ways off from being screened for critics, but ifPearl Harboris any indication, theJohn Krasinski-led film has all the makings of an unbearably short-sighted, atrociously sentimental doozie.
The two new trailers for the new Bay joint don’t do much to sway that opinion, as once again American soldiers, played by Krasinski,James Badge Dale, andPablo Schreiber, amongst others, are seemingly depicted as bad-ass saints taking out cadres of “unfriendlies,” with seemingly zero context as to why, exactly, those people are so unfriendly towards Americans.Breaking Badfans will note the inclusion ofDavid Costabile, who played Gale on the masterful AMC series, who plays the non-descript “Chief” in the film, which again suggests a general disinterest as to what these men really think and feel inside, and a stressing on the importance of their jobs, underlining the script’s simplistic view of complex characters.
Check out both the green band trailer (first) and red band trailer for13 Hoursbelow:
Now, to be fair, the action does look positively thrilling, which has been true of even Bay’s most deplorable works. It’s why, at heart, Bay is more a master of the perverse and pyrotechnic, all fireworks and sardonic one-liners, and absolutely the wrong choice for this kind of rattlingly political material. (The right choice, of course, would be the great, under-valuedClint Eastwood, who, fake babies and empty stools aside, has made some of the most brilliant and balanced political films of the last two decades.) Bay’s most fascinating films, namelyThe Rockand the divinely outrageousPain & Gain, tap into the grief and growing frustration of the working class, but when he gets self-serious, he creates atrocities of uncomplicated thinking and overtly tidy narrative structure.
13 Hourscomes out on January 15th, 2016.
you may check out the poster for13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazibelow:
