By John Corrado

★★½ (out of 4)

Directed by Michael Bay, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi recounts the events that unfolded on September 11th, 2012 when a United States compound in Libya came under fire by heavily armed militants, leaving a security team of six fearless men (John Krasinski, James Badge Dale, Pablo Schreiber, David Denman, Dominic Fumusa and Max Martini) to fight off the attack.

Although 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi is often heavy handed, and Michael Bay’s approach to the material is far from subtle, with the moments of character development sometimes delving into corniness, this is also one of the director’s better films after the increasingly terrible Transformers franchise.

The technical elements are undeniably solid and the film remains fairly engaging throughout the intense scenes of combat, with the well staged and gripping action sequences putting us right on the front lines through some frantic editing and all encompassing sound design.  It lacks the nuance of modern war films like The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, or the sheer force of American Sniper, but 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi still delivers enough tense action and suspenseful plotting to make it mildly worth seeing on Blu-ray.

The Blu-ray comes with an extra disc devoted to entirely bonus features, including more insight into the highly classified real events and how the film strived to accurately capture them.

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi is a Paramount release.  It’s 144 minutes and rated 14A.