An Open Letter to Michael Bay - Play to your strengths. Your films are excess: glorious, gleefully stupid excess. Stick to explosions; stick to one-liners; stick to ridiculous caricatures. Look at your best movies: The Rock, Pain & Gain, Bad Boys, hell, I'll stick up for Armageddon. They don't take themselves seriously; they bask in the world of madness you facilitate and work as adult live-action cartoons. Play to your strengths. Historical tragedy is not one of them.
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi tells the story of the attack on a diplomatic U.S. compound in the Libyan city of Benghazi on Sept 11 and 12, 2012. Among the four Americans killed was the Libyan ambassador, Christopher Stevens. The movie follows a six-men security team as they work to protect employees of the nearby CIA annex from hordes of terrorists.
The movie suffers from coming after a string of war films, namely Lone Survivor, Fury, and American Sniper, whose stories took more risks and were executed well. Here, writer Chuck Hogan sticks to archetypes - the soldier with a pregnant wife, the soldier who clowns around on the job, the nebbish chief who knows nothing other than protocol, etc. - and structures the film like a video game, where our heroes swap aimless dialogue before a wave of indiscriminate terrorists charge their position. Rinse and repeat.
Some directors can work around such a script, but Bay is content to use the same moves from '95. He shoots our heroes in a tilt from below; he never stops moving the camera, loading up as much of the frame as possible; he rarely lets an explosion slide without a wide shot for us to revel in the fire. We've seen it in Bad Boys, we've seen it in Transformers, we've even seen it in the properties he produces, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014). Enough is enough. I'm not against calling cards; from a Tarantino fan, that'd be hypocrisy. However, Tarantino's signature moves - the trunk shot, tweaking genres, mixing in elements from older movies - work for two reasons.
With every movie, he gives his style a new context. In Pulp Fiction, the trunk holds Jules' and Vincent's guns, is a twist on the blue-collar worker pulling out their tools for work. In Kill Bill, the trunk holds a gagged and bloodied Sofie Fatale, the scene changing into a potential execution. With Michael Bay, the wide shot for the explosion makes the same comment every time: "Woah, that's massive!" His trademarks aren't integrated into the narrative to distinguish the storytelling.
Tarantino's moves also work because they're not only directed, but written, produced, and in some cases, acted by, him. People claim Tarantino's movies live in the same universe, and considering that, excluding Jackie Brown, his films are original stories, he has more of a luxury to live in his own head and project his viewpoints on-screen. Bay has made adaptations of Transformers, and with Pearl Harbor and 13 Hours, retold historical events. With an adaptation of some visual media, there's already an expectation of style, of look, that when Bay's mannerisms get into it, betrays the original aesthetic of the property. With historical events, the expectation is based on news footage, previous reports, and the calling cards distract us from the story and remind us who's behind the wheel.
The performances are solid; John Krasinski carries some dramatic heft, and I did enjoy Pablo Schreiber, even if some of his comedy was out of place. The main actors have chemistry, and given stronger characters, would better sell the brotherhood of war movies like this often explore. The supporting cast, sadly, is either underused or relegated to awkward comic relief, often in a scene that doesn't match, tonally.
13 Hours is already a divisive film, straddling Rotten Tomatoes' fresh/rotten percentage. Potentially, this can be attributed to Michael Bay's direction (more mature than his most recent works), or the politics behind the events of Benghazi and Hillary Clinton's role. Thankfully, one need not be politically savvy to understand the film; Bay focuses the story to the "what, who, when" of the events, merely hinting at his political bias. If you enjoy Bay's films or the war genre, there's a chance you might like it but I'd make sure to check out something like Lone Survivor or Fury first.
Thank you all for reading; I'm the Man Without a Plan, signing off.
No comments:
Post a Comment