An unloved and underrated war epic that flopped in the face of being dubbed ‘fanatical and ignorant’ hunkers down for a streaming siege

Being one of the very best in the industry while still getting denigrated as an otherwise terrible filmmaker is about as oxymoronic as it gets, and yet it perfectly encapsulates the polarizing nature of Michael Bay down to a tee. Even when he tries to broaden his horizons in movies like Pearl Harbor and 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, he inevitably ends up coming under fire.

The latter was unquestionably a flop, though, with the $50 million (cheap for Bay’s usual standards) feature falling short of $70 million at the global box office, while a middling 51 percent Rotten Tomatoes approval rating ironically made it one of his best-reviewed efforts in a while, although it’s the 82 percent user average from upwards of 25,000 votes that’s worth taking into account.

13 Hours saw Bay opt for a surprisingly restrained approach through the first two acts, but given the story focuses on a dwindling band of soldiers being attacked by wave upon wave of enemy combatants, Bayhem was always going to win out on the end. When it does, it’s staged in a visceral and hard-hitting fashion that comfortably makes the explosive finale one of his best-ever stretches in any film.

Naturally, the Libyan government wasn’t best pleased at the handling of the true-life events, denouncing The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi as American propaganda, as well as calling it “fanatical and ignorant” and blasting the narrative for turning “America’s failure to protect its own citizens in a fragile state into a typical action movie all about American heroism.”

All that aside, streaming subscribers have gone all-in with 13 Hours, seeing as FlixPatrol has revealed it to be one of the most-watched titles on both Paramount Plus and iTunes so far this week.