I want to make one thing clear from the onset: the heroism of the six private contractors who saved the CIA operatives in Benghazi is not in question here. Those men risked their lives, saved dozens, and cleaned up a messy situation which they did not create in a hostile and murky political environment. They all deserved to be glorified as heroes, as the movie does. That said...
Michael Bay is not known as a subtle film maker (see: anything he has ever done, ever), and the incident in Benghazi is a complex diplomatic and militaristic situation which is still under investigation as to what really happened. I was worried that Bay would flatten out all the complexities of the narrative to highlight how great America is, and to an extent he certainly did this. In 13 Hours, he makes a compelling argument for smaller government and a private military (the CIA and State Department were one bit with a ladder short of the Keystone Cops in their incompetency), but it completely ignores the complex diplomatic situation that the US was in. It never fully raises the big question: what were any of those people doing in Libya to being with? The failure was not so much the rescue operation as it was the arrogance to think any American would be safe in Libya in 2012. Rather than grapple fully with that question, it shows how the manliest men with beards and private contracts were the only thing standing between American lives and death. It was more nuanced than I was expecting, though, and there were some moments where the film at least acknowledged that it might not be as simple as blowing up the bad guys to save the good guys. In the end, though, the government failed and private enterprise saved the day (which I am not sure is exactly accurate).
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