Former Benghazi CIA Chief Slams ’13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi’

“13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” is directed by award-winning filmmaker Michael Bay, known for the Transformers movies, Bad Boys and many other films too numerous to mention.

The movie is based on the book, “13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened In Benghazi”, by New York Times bestselling author Mitchell Zuckoff and members of the Annex Security Team.

“Our job is to tell the story of these guys on the ground and to leave the politics out of it”, Badge Dale further confirms. Among other aspects, the acting is decent, the visuals are good, there is a mild level of humor and the action is quite appealing.

Not satisfied with that, House Republicans voted to create yet another committee to investigate Clinton and Benghazi. That connection is part of what helped them survive, and part of what makes the story of that survival so worth hearing.

And that’s how two of the actors who play them want us to see it. You could be charitable and interpret 13 Hours as a critique of the convoluted way in which America organizes its military, and the crossed wires of intelligence and defense that contributed to the confusion on that day. It’s a small victory for the filmmaker and us as his audience.

At one point in the film, one of the soldiers actually compares the ongoing fighting to a horror film. It’s also trying to do a lot of the things that Clint Eastwood did with American Sniper, only not as well. It is completely unthinkable and scary at times like zombies coming out of nowhere at the taking of the Alamo as these locals just appear. You feel as helpless as they do, and just as anxious for their lives and families they left back home.

AP: What do you hope viewers will take away from this film? Once more. Even his mother told him not to direct. “Why the headache”, she said. It can also often be hard to always tell who is who in the midst of a firefight and nighttime setting. And the release of “13 Hours” is adding fuel to the fire.

While some conservatives have touted the film as an embarrassment to Clinton, the movie’s creators, including director Michael Bay, maintained it has no political agenda.

The film has all the hallmarks of its director’s signature style: slow shots of dialogue between characters contrast fast-paced action with explosions; a weak leader gets usurped when the “right thing to do” becomes apparent, even though it isn’t “by the book;” and what starts as a rescue turns out to be an epic battle for survival. You know Bay is setting you up by showing a magnificent mansion in the dessert with a swimming pool that would impress Mark Spitz and romantic palm trees that you know eventually will be blown to smithereens, but because of the lush allure your emotions stay a little longer and then the first ambush grabs you by the jugular and you are glued to your seat though you squirm a little.

AP: Who do you think was to blame for what happened?

This weekend 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi will have to go up against Ride Along 2, post-Oscar nominations The Revenant and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, so I expect it to open somewhere around 4th place, $15-20 million. We spent about 24 hours together.