13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (8/28/25)

Evan and Jack are joined by Aaron and Carlee from the Hit Factory podcast to discuss Michael Bay's 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, the 2016 film that sent John Krasinski off on an action hero deployment from which he has yet to return. The story of a group of GRS security contractors hired to protect US diplomats and CIA operatives in Benghazi, two of whom were killed in an insurgent attack on September 11, 2012, Bay's 13 Hours is, like many of our films, a tall tale only partially based in the dirty truth. Jack, Evan, Aaron and Carlee look at how GWOT cinema refashions the warfighters of the post-9/11 era into modern day working class heroes, hard men doing hard jobs that few understand, struggling against a thickheaded bureaucracy and lacking union protection. Bay's talents shine in the economy of action and quick characterizations, but his purposeful lack of context elides the Punisher culture politics that arose from Obama-era deployments abroad and pervaded the real-world fallout from Benghazi.

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