Here are review links for this film submitted by our members:
- Jason Bailey @ Flavorwire
- Excerpt: It’s an easy way to critic-proof your movie, and the woefully predictable outcome of putting a diplomatic tragedy and political hot potato into the hands of perhaps our most simple-minded filmmaker, but let’s do this: let’s ignore the obvious red and blue elements, let’s bypass the obvious digs at Obama and Clinton and the like, let’s take Bay’s word that his film “doesn’t get political at all” and that he only aims to tell this story and honor these men. Even taken purely on those terms, it’s still garbage – punishingly paced, flimsily constructed, tackily executed with the subtlety and panache of a third-rate 1930s melodrama.
- Chris Barsanti @ Film Journal International
- Excerpt: Saying that this powerful, fact-based action drama about the 2012 Benghazi consulate attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stephens is Michael Bay’s greatest film isn’t actually faint praise.
- Francisco Cangiano @ CineXpress [Spanish]
- Kevin Carr @ Fat Guys at the Movies
- Excerpt: “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” is easily Michael Bay’s best effort in his filmography. It’s not always an easy movie to watch, but it is certainly one that is worth watching.
- Bill Clark @ From The Balcony
- Excerpt: 13 Hours is a visceral, pounding experience that works as a vintage Bay action film even as it skirts the bigger overall picture.
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: We may never know the full truth, but Bay would have us believe it is all very black and white.
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: Hogan’s screenplay omits vital context … and Bay’s typical style of visual overload … does no favors for the logistics of what is happening.
- Kimberly Gadette @ doddle
- Excerpt: Finally, the word “Benghazi” resounds with true meaning.
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Patriotic & action-packed – just don’t expect accuracy or clarity…
- Vadym Grygoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
- Courtney Howard @ Sassy Mama In LA
- Excerpt: This is Michael Bay’s best film in almost two decades.
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Michael Bay propagandizes for a right-wing idea of “true America,” seething with disdain for anyone who isn’t a former elite soldier turned mercenary.
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: For all of Michael Bay’s overblown tendencies, “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” buzzes with sociopolitical tension and pyrotechnics that are actually germane to the story being told.
- Benjamin Kramer @ The Voracious Filmgoer
- Kristen Lopez @ Awards Circuit
- Excerpt: Michael Bay gets out of his own way to craft a simple story about a national disaster.
- Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: It just wants to use a genuine tragedy to elicit some mindless thrills and push the audience’s patriotism button.
- Stefan Pape @ HeyUGuys
- Eddie Pasa @ DC Filmdom
- Excerpt: I believe 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi stands as one of Michael Bay’s finest, being a balanced, riveting film about the heroism of a few against the evil of many.
- Jason Pirodsky @ Expats.cz
- Excerpt: 13 Hours turns into an assaultive 100-minute action sequence drenched in blood, bullets, oil, and fire. There’s never enough time to question whether this might be the most appropriate way to depict these real-life events when the film dials it up to 11 and ensnares you in its brutal, unflinching grasp.
- Kristy Puchko @ CBR.com
- Excerpt: Remarkably, Michael Bay — the king of big, mindless popcorn movies — has arrived to try to set the record straight with “13 Hours,” a docudrama that brings the director’s braggadocio style to a story that’s as harrowing as it is humane.
- James Roberts @ Glide Magazine
- Excerpt: Like Bay himself, his latest work is enigmatic and oddly compelling without ever managing to cross the line into worthwhile or even memorable
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: Brash, loud, corny and—especially toward the close—cheesy in its use of special effects, the retelling of the tragic events of September, 2012, when a terrorist mob attacked an American consular facility in Libya, killing Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in the process, represents a sincere effort to be true to the facts that unfortunately falls prey to the director’s innate action-movie propensities.
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