Halpert The Headless Thompson Gunner

I saw 13 Hours over the weekend.

Several reactions:

Worst Fears Not Realized:  I’ve been rooting for this movie for a long time – ever since I met “John “Tig” Tiegen (Dominic Fumusa), and Mark “Oz” Geist (portrayed in the movie by Dominic Fumusa and Max Martini, respectively), and got a chance to interview them on my show last year.

But when I saw that Michael Bay was directing it, I felt my hope curdle into a icy ball of despair.  Bay was behind the loathsome Pearl Harbor and all the bad Transformers movies that followed on after the good one.    (Of course, he also did The Rock and the very underrated Pain and Gain, so perhaps I’m being a little harsh on the Bayver).

In a Michael Bay movie, .223 rounds apparently use napalm as a propellant.

But while it included some of Bay’s signature moves – the MTV-era editing, the slow-mo explosions, the Die Hard-style wisecracking between battle scenes – it all actually worked well.  And sometimes superlatively – as in a scene when a group of State Department employees in an armored Mercedes are getting shot at at point-blank range by a group of locals.  Really, really stunning sequence.

But the movie largely focused on the story.  And it’s there that things get interesting.

The Story Behind The Story:  The movie, of course, is about one of the most controversial events in recent years – the September 11, 2012 attack on the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.  During the attack, the US Ambassador, a State Department communications staffer, and two CIA security contractors were killed.   The situation could have gotten much worse but for the team of CIA contractors – ex-military men working as guards for the CIA compound – who responded, defending the State Department compound for 13 hours, until a scratch team of American intelligence and military led a friendly Libyan militia to the rescue.

In a typical Michael Bay movie, there’d be a twist at this point. I won’t give you any spoilers, but any infantryman can probably tell you how this turns out.

The controversy – for those of you who’ve been asleep for the past three years – is over whether a “stand down” order was given to successive levels of potential US paramilitary and military response, from the contractors on the scene all the way up to the Air Force in Italy and the 10th Special Forces group in Croatia.  If so, of course, then the Ambassador and the contractors were left dangling for half a day without any government support.  The Administration and the CIA have angrily denied it; Hillary Clinton said it made no difference at this point; the contractors on the scene all swear by it.

It’s Michael Bay – and yet it works.

The movie plays a little peek-a-boo with the issue, but for one key episode; as the State Department and CIA staffers on the scene ask, then beg, for support, we are treated to scenes of CIA contractors being held on their leash; F16s in Italy sitting on the runway, unmanned; Green Berets in the Balkans, sitting and waiting.

Why?  That question is left danging out there.

And two of the conservative reviews I’ve actually read mirror the controversy; Armond White thinks Bay defers to entertainment over substance, using the tension as just another showy Michael Bay editing trick.   Cranky T-Rex at Hot Air thinks it’s a feature, not a bug:

Bay and screenwriter Chuck Hogan wisely avoid having the story they are telling sidetracked by political concerns.  Instead they are able to hammer home the horrible truths about Benghazi that have thus far been written off as Republican political pandering.

Of course, this blog’s standard procedure is to assume all bureaucrats are lying, so you know where my money is.

The movie has been portrayed as a challenge to the inevitability of Hillary’s coronation.  I’m way too cynical to think the American people are that perceptive – but hope springs eternal.

Brothers In Arms:  The casting, of course, was interesting to say the least.

For starters – if there’s one actor in Hollywood that’s benefitted from being utterly and completely typecast, it has to be Max Martini, as Mark “Oz” Geist.

Martini and Geist at the opening. The resemblance is more than just physical.

I interviewed Geist last year – and met him, shortly after that, at an event on the 13 Hours book tour – which was the first time I’d heard that the book was going to become a feature film (which shows you how closely I follow all things Hollywood.

And while I can’t honestly say I thought “Max Martini would be the perfect casting choice to portray Geist”, it all made perfect sense, personally as well as in terms of resemblance, in the actual movie.

Of course, the casting of Jon Krasinski as the pseudonymous and fictional “Jack Silva”, portrayed as a former SEAL colleague of Tyrone “Ty” Woods (played by James Badge Dale, of Longmire fame) is a little riskier.   I thought, going in – “Jim Halpert as a SEAL?”

It’s not Krasinski’s first take at a military character (he played a bit part in Jarhead, in 2005), but it’s his first since he became “Jim Halpert” in The Office, one of the best sitcoms of the century so far.  Did he blast out of the typecast?

Yes and no – and to the extent that he didn’t, that’s OK, since he’s not in the movie to portray a real former SEAL with a striking resemblance to a sitcom character; he’s basically the audience’s third-person-omniscient stand-in in the story.

Does he pass as a SEAL?  Well, he doesn’t pass as the Hollywood stereotype of a SEAL – which is probably a good thing.

So yes, it took me a bit to get past the habits picked up in 11 years of watching The Office (and yes, I’ve seen every episode, at least in the first seven seasons, at least a few times, and yes, it’s better than the Brit version), but I pulled it off.

(The film’s other Office alum, David Denman – who played warehouse worker and Pam’s first fiance “Roy”, plays the real-life David “Boon” Benton, and passes pretty easily as a former Airborne Ranger).

Krasinski and Denman.

Conclusions:  As filmmaking craft?   It was great bit of filmmaking.  The things that play as whiz-bang cliches in most Michael Bay movies generally work, here.

Acting?  It never stretches credulity.

The message?

Well, I’ll let you watch it, and leave it to each of you to figure out what you think about it.

Worth seeing in a theater.

36 thoughts on “Halpert The Headless Thompson Gunner

  1. Isn’t it odd that Hillary’s first statement linking the embassy attack to a youtube video came minutes after she spoke with Obama on Sep 11, 2012?
    Must be a coincidence.

  2. [Sept. 11, 2012] 6:07 p.m.: The State Department’s Operations Center sends an email to the White House, Pentagon, FBI and other government agencies that said Ansar al-Sharia has claimed credit for the attack on its Facebook and Twitter accounts. (The existence of the email was not disclosed until Reuters reported it on Oct. 24.)
    . . .
    Sept. 13: At a daily press briefing, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland was asked if the Benghazi attack was “purely spontaneous or was premeditated by militants.” She declined to say, reiterating that the administration did not want to “jump to conclusions.”
    Nuland: Well, as we said yesterday when we were on background, we are very cautious about drawing any conclusions with regard to who the perpetrators were, what their motivations were, whether it was premeditated, whether they had any external contacts, whether there was any link, until we have a chance to investigate along with the Libyans. So I know that’s going to be frustrating for you, but we really want to make sure that we do this right and we don’t jump to conclusions.

    That said, obviously, there are plenty of people around the region citing this disgusting video as something that has been motivating. As the Secretary said this morning, while we as Americans, of course, respect free speech, respect free expression, there’s never an excuse for it to become violent.

    http://www.factcheck.org/2012/10/benghazi-timeline/

  3. After Hurt Locker I personally avoid Hollywood war movies, especially ones about relatively current events.

  4. I enjoyed war movies as a kid, but they were all WW II movies where we clearly were the good guys (even when robbing a bank deep behind the lines or going to extraordinary lengths to save one private). Vietnam movies sucked because we always were the bad guys, at least until very recently (We Were Soldiers was good). Hurt Locker didn’t treat us like the bad guys. Act of Valor was fun. American Sniper was amazing – I never heard a quieter audience leave a theater.

    Based on this review, I’ll take a chance on this movie. Thanks for posting it.

  5. I thought the scene where Clinton and Obama met with the Libyan insurgents to plan the attack on the compound seemed realistic. Michael Bay makes movies for teenagers. I enjoyed Michael Bay movies, once. And then I turned 16.

  6. It’s a vast, left-wing conspiracy!
    You don’t have to believe that Hillary is culpable for the Bengazi deaths to believe that she spun and lied to deflect criticism away from the Obama administration (the attack occurred < 60 days before the 2012 presidential election).
    I know, it's hard to believe that a Clinton would lie, but there you are.

  7. Yes, Emery. We all know that the hypocrite propaganda film maker Mikey Moore, is your film maker of choice.

  8. If Hillary is the D nominee this year, the one attack against her that the media can’t defend her from effectively is that she and her husband are liars.
    Bill Clinton knew exactly what he and Monica had done together and he still insisted on a DNA test of the stained dress. He was hoping that the sample was not his (possible, in his mind, I suppose), so he could continue to lie about their relationship to his wife, the press, and the American people.

  9. Hillary was Secretary of State. She can’t be so stupid that she wouldn’t know that all of America’s enemies — the Russians, the Chinese, maybe even the North Koreans — would have teams who had the job of intercepting and decoding her communications.
    She didn’t care.
    To a Clinton, the enemy is never the enemy of the United States. To the Clintons, the enemy is always their personal enemy. It is the GOP, or Ken Starr, or Monica Lewinsky, or Linda Tripp, oranyone else who might successfully get their hands on their communications and use them to get them kicked out of office, to cost them money, to get them indicted, and maybe get them put in jail.
    Any American enemy who hacked her system could be prosecuted and jailed.
    Hillary didn’t care about securing her communications because the Russians, the Chinese, and the North Koreans can’t get her indicted.

  10. BG: you forgot Vince Foster.

    Personally, I think that they should both be water boarded until they tell the truth.

  11. Emery, by the time they were 16, any one of my boys could have told you no good ever comes of opening your pie hole and letting the stupid run out.

    But you made it through without stabbing yourself in the eye with a pencil, which is good.

  12. Hillary will take the position that she testified on something before congress or the courts, and wasn’t convicted of perjury so you must accept what she said was the truth.
    And while you are trying to wrap your head around that combination of redefinitions of common terms and imperatives, all the while the real truth will be that she never testified to that fact, or that she did and was prosecuted for perjury, but plea bargained it down to a lesser charge, or she actually was convicted of perjury.
    The Clintons lie. The power of the lie is the one thing that they believe in with all of their black little hearts.

  13. The Clintons lie. The power of the lie is the one thing that they believe in with all of their black little hearts.

    Lunchbox, that statement presumes Clintons have hearts.

  14. 13 Hours is the third worst opening weekend box office of Bay’s career (not even adjusting for inflation). The free market for the win!

  15. Pingback: In The Mailbox: 01.20.16 : The Other McCain

  16. “13 Hours is the third worst opening weekend box office of Bay’s career”

    Who cares?

    And it still made a ton of money.

  17. Down here in Free America, the theater was full. 3 showings on 2 screens.

  18. DickROFLMAO is happy when the deaths of Americans by Obama’s posse Muzzy Terrorists goes unnoticed. He’s a real DEmocrat patriot.

  19. I’m sure 13 hrs would have gotten an Oscar nomination and made boffo box office if it hadn’t had so many Black guys in it.
    What the is your point, anyhow? That 13 hrs is a bad movie? That American soldiers died in an undeclared war and no one cares?
    Where do you see ‘this is good for Democrats!’ in this, “Hollywood’ RickDFL? Does it have something to do with the Koch brothers?

  20. The geniuses in the Obama state department, at it again . . . :
    Freed Iranians Never Boarded Flight Out of US
    That same day, a plane took off from somewhere on the East Coast of the United States, carrying the seven Iranian-Americans freed from U.S. custody who wanted to return to Iran (or so everyone believed). But not one of them boarded the plane, according to the U.S. officials familiar with the process. The plane left anyway because it was designated to bring the freed Americans on to their second destination in Landstuhl, Germany.

    So who were these Iranian men, and why didn’t they leave the U.S. when given the chance?

    Six of the seven have American/Iran dual citizenship and all of them had been convicted or charged with crimes related to selling sensitive equipment to Iran in violation of strict trade embargoes.

    Three of them – 69-year-old Bahram Mechanic, 72-year-old Khosrow Afghahi and Tooraj Faridi – were caught up in an alleged conspiracy in Texas to illegally export equipment and supplies to Iran. According to the Department of Justice, the items they sent are frequently used in a wide range of military systems, including surface-air and cruise missiles. Many of them have families living in the United States.

    Mechanic was allegedly the head of the conspiracy in the U.S., and starting in July 2010 his network allegedly sent at least $24 million worth of commodities to Iran. Until Sunday, both Mechanic and Afghahi were in U.S. jail awaiting trial. Faridi had already been released on $75,000 bond and was awaiting trial.

    http://abcnews.go.com/International/freed-iranians-boarded-flight-us/story?id=36376969

    Yep, ol’ Lurch payed Iran over a 1000 million $ for the privilege of keeping Iranian-born spies and traitors in the United States.
    I figure I will pay about 0.5 million in federal income taxes during my work life. I could retire maybe five or ten years earlier if Uncle Sam hadn’t taken it from me. Glad it’s being spent on something useful.

  21. BG:

    “What the is your point, anyhow?” Providing a dose of real world facts.
    “That 13 hrs is a bad movie?” Don’t know, haven’t seen it. I enjoyed Battleground: Los Angeles, so I am probably not your go to critic.
    “That American soldiers died in an undeclared war and no one cares?”
    First, they were not soldiers, they were contractors. Americans do care. That is why Lone Survivor did $125m box office, American Sniper even more. But Americans clearly have no interest is aimless conspiracy theories. We love us a good paranoid conspiracy thriller, there is a whole genre of movies about those. But they won’t tolerate boring cliches. They care, they just don’t like listening to endless drivel about Benghazi.

  22. BG: “Yep, ol’ Lurch payed Iran over a 1000 million $ for the privilege of keeping Iranian-born spies and traitors in the United States.”

    Or you could say, Iran traded 4 Americans for 7 Iranians, who they don’t get to collect. Kind of like the Vikings sending a whole list of player to New England for Tom Brady and Brady saying, ‘no thanks, I will stay here in Boston and chill’.

  23. Our clueless Rick+/-Libturd is back. To spout libturd talking points no less, not that he can do anything rational. Conspiracy theories form people who were part of and survived the event? That is correct, it is all made up. After all, according to Shrillery, it was all spontaneous reaction to a youtube movie, and we all know Shrillery is the epitome of honesty and truthfullness. You keep on believing you, clueless, illogical, uneducated hack.

  24. Providing a dose of real world facts.

    Well, selected real world facts.

    Other real world facts:

    1. It’s a good movie.
    2. Hillary Clinton’s hands are dripping with the blood and gore of four men, all of whom were better humans than her or her husband.

    Now we’ve got facts.

    Iran traded 4 Americans for 7 Iranians

    …and a hard price tag on future hostages.

  25. Lurch: We’ll give you back your seven terrorists in return for four Americans you have in prison.
    Mullah: No, don’t give them back, give them weapons, explosives, and a bus ticket to the Mall of America.
    Lurch: Okay. It’s win-win!

  26. BG: Have you ever considered the possibility that they may just like America more than Iran? What makes you think they want to blow up the MOA?

  27. BG: Have you ever considered the possibility that they may just like America more than Iran? What makes you think they want to blow up the MOA?
    I guess you are one o’ them ‘low information voters’ that voted for Obama x 2.

    ix of the seven have American/Iran dual citizenship and all of them had been convicted or charged with crimes related to selling sensitive equipment to Iran in violation of strict trade embargoes.

    Three of them – 69-year-old Bahram Mechanic, 72-year-old Khosrow Afghahi and Tooraj Faridi – were caught up in an alleged conspiracy in Texas to illegally export equipment and supplies to Iran. According to the Department of Justice, the items they sent are frequently used in a wide range of military systems, including surface-air and cruise missiles. Many of them have families living in the United States.

    Mechanic was allegedly the head of the conspiracy in the U.S., and starting in July 2010 his network allegedly sent at least $24 million worth of commodities to Iran. Until Sunday, both Mechanic and Afghahi were in U.S. jail awaiting trial. Faridi had already been released on $75,000 bond and was awaiting trial.

  28. BG: You don’t think there is a leap from trying to make some money in a shady deal to avoid sanctions to blowing up the MOA? Hell, Dick Cheney helped Haliburton do business with Iran despite the sanctions law by working through non-US subsidiaries, you worried about him and Liz blowing up the MOA?

  29. “You don’t think there is a leap from trying to make some money in a shady deal to avoid sanctions to blowing up the MOA?”
    The leap from taking commercial flying lessons to killing over 3,000 people by bringing down the twin towers is greater than the leap from conspiring to sell illegal tech America’s sworn enemies to shooting up MOA. Agreed?
    Everything else in your comment was tu quoque (aka ‘logical fallacy’).
    There is nothing wrong with admitting Kerry is an idiot, RickDFL. He is a self confessed war criminal, after all.
    If they have any brains at all, they will scouring their citizenship apps for falsehoods so they can yank their citizenship and deport them.

    FBI agents arrested an Aliso Viejo man suspected of being part of a network that illegally transported $24 million in sensitive electronics to Iran over the past five years.

    Khosrow Afghahi, 71, was arrested Friday, according to a statement from the FBI.

    “They were wearing the green vests, they had the guns strapped, they had weapons pulled,” Denise Cofey, a neighbor, told CBS Los Angeles in describing FBI activity at the scene.

    The Department of Justice charged Afghahi, four other men and four corporations with circumventing U.S. sanctions and exporting high-tech microelectronics to Iran in violation of the International Emergency Powers Act, according to a 24-count indictment unsealed Friday.

    Afghahi and Bahram Mechanic, 69, of Houston together own Iran-based Faratel and its Texas-based sister company, Smart Power Systems, according to the FBI. The companies design and build uninterruptible power supplies for various Iranian entities, the FBI reports, including the Iranian Ministry of Defense, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and the Iranian Centrifuge Technology Company.

    Since July 2010, the DOJ indictment alleges Afghahi and his colleagues — led by Mechanic — conspired to ship American-made microelectronics to Iran while evading a government licensing system meant to control such exports. The indictment states Afghahi and Mechanic would get a list of goods wanted in Iran and ship them to a company in Taiwan, which would forward them to Turkey and then on to Iran.

    http://www.ocregister.com/articles/iran-658576-fbi-afghahi.html

  30. Lunchbox, you expect a person who does not know what +/- means to understand the meaning of “tu quoque”? Dude, the only thing RinkyDink had countered with was more talking points. You cannot get more liberally brain dead than “Halliburton” chant. I am actually surprised he did not go all out to say “it was Bush’s fault”. You can lead an ass to water, but he is still an ass.

  31. “Actually according to Box Office Mojo it is currently losing $29 million ($21m earned on $50m production cost).”–Rick dfl
    People who begin a sentence with the word “actually” are douche bags.
    Rick, check your stats. The movie has been in theaters for 9 days and has collected $26M at the box office. “Truth”, the alternate dimension rendering of the Rathergate scandal, opened in October and has only gotten $2.5 million at the box office. I feel safe in predicting it will not make a profit, in addition to being full of lies.

  32. Whenever I am tempted to think of the elite Left as having a somewhat normal view of the world, I remind myself that Rathergate was the result of a posse of said elite Leftists deciding that the most important thing for Americans to know just before the 2004 election was that G. W. Bush had skipped a few reserve weekends three decades earlier.
    And then used clumsily forged documents to make their case.
    This is Defcon 4, Dog Gone style, fractal craziness (fractal craziness is where every bit of the craziness is just more craziness on a smaller scale).

  33. fractal craziness

    Lunchbox, you should copyright that term, it is very descriptive. Hope you won’t mind me using it.

  34. If they have any brains at all, they will scouring their citizenship apps for falsehoods so they can yank their citizenship and deport them.

    HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!! Good one, Bento.

    Seriously, the fact that we’ve let seven convicted spies/arms dealers out of jail and are now letting them go about freely in this country says about all we need to know about the wisdom of the State Department and the White House, don’t you think? Anyone with real intelligence would have told the Iranians that talks about their nuclear programs might start AFTER political prisoners were freed, and that freedom for Iranian spies and arms dealers would not be part of the deal.

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