Michael Bay does not make complicated films. He never has. His films have no moral vision beyond the borders of the theater screen. His political worldview is often no more complex than letting the camera linger on a waving American flag, or wide-shooting historical monuments to add the illusion of thinking to a story with absolutely zero texture. But he sure knows how to film an action sequence.
This is clear throughout his body of work, whether it’s tough guys in tough spots like Armageddon or Pearl Harbor, or robot trucks doing robot battle with Decepticons. Bay’s films are all style and flare and execution without meaning or merit.
Which makes his next project, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, particularly interesting. 13 Hours is an action film, starring a heavily-bearded John Krasinski, about our men in uniform, and their commitment to America. The trailer, out today, assures us that this will be uncomplicated in its perspective regarding the events of Benghazi, Libya in 2012.
This is strange territory for Bay. The events in Benghazi were tragic, and they mean something to very different to Conservatives than to Democrats. To Conservatives, Benghazi means the failure of President Obama, a cover up, congressional hearings and investigations into then Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, what she knew and even details about e-mail servers. To Democrats, it means Conservative grandstanding and exploitation of tragedy.
The gulf between that meaning is a complicated place, one far murkier than the usual setting of a Michael Bay picture. So what makes this interesting? This is a Michael Bay film. This is a pure military action picture and making a pure military action picture will require avoiding everything that complicates Benghazi.
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi opens in January, 2016. One would think that a film about the disastrous events of Benghazi in 2021, timed to the start of a presidential election might make a few candidates, or at least their campaign managers, nervous.
But this is Michael Bay. All you need to know is, there will bullets. The fallout of Benghazi might make for an interesting, complicated bit of cinema, but that’s for a more sophisticated intellect than Michael Bay.
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