13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
Paramount Pictures | Release Date: January 15, 2016 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
48
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 36 Critic Reviews
Positive:
12
Mixed:
19
Negative:
5
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
New York Daily NewsJoe DziemianowiczJan 13, 2016
Sure, Bay indulges some signature cinematic fetishes. But he shows restraint with the slowed-down, sexed-up shots. War is gritty here, not glamorous. Result: characters, stakes and emotions feel authentic — all the more so thanks to terrific actors including James Badge Dale and Pablo Schreiber as actual ex-military men and family men who battled terrorists. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliJan 17, 2016
The movie is imperfect and overlong but it’s never boring. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperJan 14, 2016
This is no “Zero Dark Thirty” or “The Hurt Locker.” Lacking in nuance and occasionally plagued by corny dialogue, “13 Hours” is nonetheless a well-photographed, visceral action film, and a sincere and fitting tribute to those secret soldiers. Read full review
75
New York PostKyle SmithJan 14, 2016
Still, if 13 Hours lacks the gravitas of “American Sniper,” it’s powerful stuff. Bay’s goal is to put you right in these men’s boots, to feel the heat, the fear, the fatigue, the weight of the weapons and the web of camaraderie. Read full review
75
The Seattle TimesSoren AndersenJan 14, 2016
The movie’s main drawback is that its main characters are surprisingly ill-defined.... It’s a frustrating flaw in an otherwise engrossing picture. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerJan 15, 2016
Bay and his screenwriter, Chuck Hogan, adapting the nonfiction bestseller “13 Hours,” by Mitchell Zuckoff and the members of the Annex Security Team, resolutely avoid any overt political inferences. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaJan 15, 2016
13 Hours, by its very subject matter, can't help but tap into the confluent veins of politics and patriotism. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrJan 14, 2016
A straight-up combat film. Not a very good combat film — it wallows in genre clichés and makes a hash of its action scenes — but one that does get you to empathize with its grunts, the “secret soldiers” of the title. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJan 14, 2016
Some of this is slick and enjoyable in what I'd characterize as the wrong way, the painlessly bloody, box-office-friendly way. Read full review
63
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanJan 14, 2016
As an action film, it is intense and gripping. As a drama, it is bombastic and unsubtle. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreJan 14, 2016
As a brutal and gory combat picture with historical underpinnings, these “Secret Soldiers” acquit themselves heroically. The action is visceral and intense. Read full review
63
USA TodayBrian TruittJan 14, 2016
After a string of iffy Transformers movies, Bay reminds that he can do a much better action movie with humans than alien robots: 13 Hours is his best work in the genre since his 1990s hits Bad Boys and The Rock. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfJan 20, 2016
The final word on this incident will require a more thoughtful filmmaker. But hopefully, that artist will possess at least half of Bay’s punishing, peerless craft. Read full review
60
Screen DailyJohn HazeltonJan 14, 2016
Intense battle action and rousing heroics just about make up for the dramatic shortcomings of 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. Read full review
60
SlateDavid EhrlichJan 14, 2016
The action is never topsy-turvy enough for 13 Hours to be mistaken for a Paul Greengrass film, but it’s also not so operatic that it feels like Bay is turning a tragedy into Bad Boys III. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJan 14, 2016
It’s when bullets fly that Bay is at his best. He stages the battles well, and builds tension effectively and at times inventively. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinJan 14, 2016
The battle scenes are loud and jangly and dissonant enough to unnerve you — they work. But I’d like to see a congressional committee grill Bay and screenwriter Chuck Hogan about what’s going on half the time. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyJan 13, 2016
To use what, under the circumstances, is a far too convenient metaphor, Bay is interested in accelerating from zero to 100 as quickly as possible and then maintaining speed, rather than skillfully shifting gears and adjusting speeds based on curves, hills and road conditions. In this case, he gets you there, but you know the ride could have been a lot more varied and nuanced. Read full review
58
The PlaylistRuss FischerJan 13, 2016
Bay's overwrought tendencies simultaneously lead to the film's most compelling sequences of tense, bloody battle even as they forestall the more nuanced storytelling that would be crucial to truly unpacking the attacks. Bay may see the film as a cry of truth; muffled by his own predilections it's only a whisper. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyJan 13, 2016
Packed with misfiring grenade launchers, blue lens flares, and Mercedes armored cars, 13 Hours makes the best case for Bay as a toy-box aesthete with an abstract sense of motion and color—and the best case against him as an incoherent jingoism fetishist. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyKevin P. SullivanJan 13, 2016
There’s a real story of American heroism somewhere in here, but it’s diluted by Bay’s worst tendencies. Read full review
55
The VergeTasha RobinsonJan 14, 2016
[Bay's] tremendous sentimentality is a major issue, bogging down his efforts at realism in flag-waving, tear-jerking scenes that try to make every heartfelt emotion land with mortar-fire force. Read full review
50
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallJan 21, 2016
13 Hours is another flag-wrapped paean to true-life Alamo heroism in the vein of Lone Survivor, hoping for ticket sales like American Sniper. Neither of those movies carry the political burden of 13 Hours, and Bay isn't one to channel it. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorJan 15, 2016
Bay has attempted to carefully characterize and humanize each member of the security force, and Krasinski, Dale and Schreiber are largely successful at creating personable fighters. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranJan 14, 2016
This action facility, however, is not enough to make "13 Hours" more than sporadically successful, in part because, at 2 hours and 24 minutes, the film is too long for its own good and risks feelings of repetition and exhaustion. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternJan 14, 2016
The movie is a relentlessly intense, grotesquely overblown and numbingly long account of extraordinary heroism on the part of six American security operators in the midst of horrific chaos. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJan 14, 2016
It’s long, downright dispiriting, enjoyable only sometimes, and yet there’s a feeling of authenticity. It’s neither bad nor good, but interesting. It might improve with age. Read full review
50
VarietyJustin ChangJan 13, 2016
It’s a nail-biter and a head-scratcher rolled into one: The mind may initially race to keep up with logistics, but eventually one acknowledges the futility of trying to make sense of a situation that Bay himself hasn’t managed to clarify. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineJake ColeJan 13, 2016
Of course, when the action gets underway, Bay unleashes that flashy id of his, and all of his flaws as a titan of blockbuster filmmaking come to the fore. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovJan 13, 2016
A weird mix of pseudo-jingoism and Bay’s usual bombastic firepower, 13 Hours ends up being a straight-up war film without an actual war in it. Read full review
45
TheWrapInkoo KangJan 13, 2016
In terms of anything that has to do with characterization, Chuck Hogan‘s script is punishingly rote. But as bombastic, shoot-‘em-up spectacle, 13 Hours is a visceral, well-paced and often beautiful action-thriller. Read full review
30
The New York TimesManohla DargisJan 14, 2016
The movie is a pummeling slog — 45 minutes of setup and an eternity of relentless combat. Read full review
25
Rolling StonePeter TraversJan 15, 2016
Is there an audience for this? Sadly, yes. There’s nothing wrong with a movie that cheers American heroes. But this one does so by reducing everything else to cardboard. Read full review
25
RogerEbert.comPeter SobczynskiJan 14, 2016
As an action movie and as a historical document, it is a bombastic and wholly inauthentic mess that displays precious little interest in the men whose actions and sacrifices it purports to honor. Read full review
20
The GuardianJordan HoffmanJan 13, 2016
Abhorrent politics aside, it’s also a terrible movie. The dialogue is atrocious, the performances rote. One could make the case that its incoherence is a grand meta-narrative statement about the fluidity of combat, but I don’t think that’s the case. Read full review
0
ConsequenceBlake GobleJan 13, 2016
Shots are short, oddly made, and shoddily smashed together. There’s no spatial continuity, let alone consistency in time of day, or even a care for any kind of visual coherence. 13 Hours is just chaos. It’s unwatchable, unlikable, and unworthy of respect. Read full review
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