If you’re a movie fan, the name Michael Bay strikes fear into your soul. The man is known for making loud and bombastic movies without much substance. His Transformers franchise has been critically panned from the start and really anything he’s done since The Rock hasn’t been well received. Well, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi is here and you may be surprised to know that it isn’t a total disaster.

The movie focuses on six men who are ex-military and contracted to protect a covert CIA base in Benghazi, when the attack on the US embassy takes place back on September 11th, 2012 these six jumped into action. Attempting to save as many people as possible until help could arrive in the morning.

The movie, as a whole, has its issues. It feels a tad too long and bits and pieces of it could’ve been shortened. The movie is about 140 minutes and it doesn’t need to be.  Also I never really got to attached to the characters, you know who’s who by the end, but when stuff starts hitting the fan I felt a bit distant from it, and Bay needs to stop with his forced humor. He tries to throw it into every one of his films and every time it comes off awkward and stale. Yes some of the banter between the men works, but when it gets really serious I don’t need a bad one liner to take me out of the film.

Besides that I have to give some credit to Bay here. All his usual tropes are here. The explosions with bright white fireworks coming out of them, the saturated colors, and the low angle shots. They all work here surprisingly well. The action is well shot, steady, and engaging. The story is compelling and pulls you along at a pretty fast pace, and you can tell Bay wanted to do this story justice. He worked with the men who were there to tell the story as accurately as possible.

January doesn’t always have the best track record in terms of film. Some of the worst of each year start out the year and it can be a bit of a hard month once you’ve seen all the Oscar movies. Well 13 Hours is one that’s worth your money among all the garbage that comes out this month. It’s not perfect, and is far from the best war movie I’ve seen in recent memory, but the final product ends up telling an interesting story and gives us some well done action sequences. It may not win any awards but if you enjoy the likes of American Sniper and Lone Survivor, I think you may find some enjoyment out of it.

Rating: 3/5 A good directing attempt from Bay, but I fear Transformers 5 might negate any credibility this movie earns him.