From Benghazi to Ate Vi: The uses of cheese
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi has so many beefy bearded guys in it, we thought we had wandered into a friend’s fantasy sequence. Then we realized that the gratuitous hotness does have a point. Michael Bay’s version of the events at the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi in 2012 is so messy, the only way we could know whom to root for was to look for the hot guys. It doesn’t help that in Libya, everyone has facial hair.
The movie’s not awful, and we’re talking about a director who has plumbed new depths of awfulness with the Transformers movies. It’s thrilling in parts, reminding us how much we enjoyed the early Bay movie, The Rock. It also reminds us that there should be a legal limit to how much slow-motion a filmmaker may use. Worse, it has no notion of geography. We don’t know where the American installation is relative to anything, which part of the villa Ambassador Chris Stevens is in, where the attackers are coming from…jeez, we can’t even tell which ones the attackers are. But show us John Krasinski in a tight t-shirt, and immediately we know whose side we’re on. (Good for you, Emily Blunt, please make an action thriller with your husband.)
February 3rd, 2016 at 04:23
One thing that seems to be downplayed when the film was promoted out here was that these main characters were mercenaries. It’s hard to curry American jingoism when loyalty to country is secondary priority the way it is in this movie.
Of course, it may also be a reflection of what the US values these days.
In other topics, I can’t wait for you to check out the new X-Files series. Last night’s episode alone would leave you thinking deeply as the broadcast worked as commentary about how the show fits into our pop-culture fabric in the 21st century.
It was also nice to see Kumail Nanjiani finally live out his dream of being in the show–a great leap from recording podcasts unpacking the show’s episodes as a super-fan.
February 3rd, 2016 at 13:08
volume-addict: True, and the movie may have flopped because it doesn’t openly condemn Hillary and Obama. Not enough for the Fox crowd.
Will wait for X-Files to finish so I can see everything at once.