As we have seen on countless occasions, the streaming It is always there to recover films that did not do well at the box office. A second opportunity for productions that coincided on the billboard with more attractive proposals or that were victims of advertising campaigns that missed the mark. Streaming, more stable and more likely to encourage discoveries, is fertile ground for second chances. The last lucky one is ‘13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi‘, which you can see on Netflix, SkyShowtime and Movistar Plus+.
The name of Michael Bay at the controls seemed to guarantee a box office success, but it seems that the director’s audience prefers to see him in more urban action films, because the film did not end up doing well at the box office: 69.4 million in collection after its premiere in 2016, for a budget of 50something insufficient if we take into account the marketing expenses that films of this magnitude usually entail. Not even the then very popular John Krasinski seemed to encourage the public to go to the theaters.
The film is inspired by real events to take us to September 11, 2012, on the anniversary of the fall of the Twin Towers, when a group of Islamist militiamen attacked the American consulate and a nearby CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya. The six-member Special Operations team sent to rescue the survivors faced a military challenge that was soon beyond everyone’s control.
Although the film, filmed between the last two ‘Transformers’ adventures that Bay signed, went somewhat unnoticed at the box office, it is one of his highest-rated productions on rating aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes or Filmaffinity. What is clear is that its seriousness and drama could have worked against it after lighter films such as the saga of the transformable robots or the masterful ‘Pain and Money’. It’s time to get it back.
In WorldOfSoftware | What would be the cinema of all time directed by Michael Bay
