I didn’t really know what to expect from 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. Mostly because someone else bought my ticket, I didn’t even figure out what it was rated until the actors started talking like soldiers with their life in danger. While its director, Michael Bay, has movies like Armageddon and The Rock on his résumé, he’s also responsible for giving the world Texas Chainsaw Massacre, three Bad Boys movies, and four Transformers episodes.
This film depicts real life events and even starts with the words, “This is a true story.” No war story can be told objectively, but I wondered if Hollywood was taking advantage of a free plot or trying to make propaganda entertaining.
I don’t watch TV news, but I knew two things from my Facebook stream:
1) Team Elephant wanted to bury Hillary Clinton for her flippant response to the loss of life depicted in this movie.
2) Team Donkey treated her like a martyr who was able to “survive [a] marathon Benghazi hearing.”
I find the word survive cheapened in that context, when compared to what the diplomats, intelligence agents, and private security detail survived that fateful September 11. While the movie doesn’t delve far into the political side of the story, I left the theater thinking that I wouldn’t trust the vast majority of current presidential candidates to make the right decision in a similar situation.
In fact, I wouldn’t even trust myself.
I would trust my buddy from the Marine Corps who invited me to watch 13 Hours with him. I would trust my Army Ranger buddy who doesn’t brag about his time in Special Forces. I would trust my friend who has served in the Air Force and has been an ardent student of the world’s conflict with the Islamic State. I would actually trust a lot of people I will never know—people who are vocationally living in the unsolvable enigma that is making peace with irrational hatred & violence.
13 hours introduced the nuance of the frantic moments in Benghazi but fittingly didn’t give much time to ponder alternative plans of action.
While the lines at times proved as cartoonish as any other action movie and also as didactic as those from Oscar contenders, it successfully communicated that courage and selflessness confronted the horrific unknown. Even without American Sniper‘s acting or Black Hawk Down‘s screenplay, it demonstrated well both the potential for dark depravity and the inherent fraternity of the human soul.
13 Hours will not be go on my list of favorite movies. As with the military movies that have preceded it, I hope I never have to watch it again. It is, however, one of the most important movies I’ve ever seen. I’m grateful someone made it—and that they made it indelible. In a world that turns every moment of history into a meme or exhausted debate fodder, I’m thankful someone took the time to find the heroes behind the headlines.
And I’m thankful there were heroes to find.
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Stock image linked to its source.
