Weapons man (ex SF) review:
http://weaponsman.com/?p=28975
We’ve already held up Black Hawk Down as an example, and having read the books in both cases, we can say categorically that 13 Hours makes fewer departures from the book than its film grandpappy. This film is accurate in many ways large and small.
The degree to which the movie sets replicate the combat locations of the diplomatic compound and the annex is uncanny and bespeaks hard work by researchers and below-the-line technical crew.
Most of the firearms as carried by the GRS and State DSS shooters are quite correct. Some capabilities of ISR systems are exaggerated or “Hollywood.” Tracers are all right and RPGs and grenades are all wrong, and Bay’s pyrotechnicians couldn’t resist good old Hollywood fireballs. There is, generally, more flame and less smoke than probably occurred that miserable night; the reduced smoke is probably a concession to the storyteller’s art.
The portrayal of client/PSD relations (including the near-suicidal cluelessness of those Harvard and Yale types when doing meets) is so accurate it’s uncanny. Did that really get cleared for publication in the book? It did. And it made it into the movie. Uncanny.
Perhaps a reason for the unusual level of accuracy is the unusual degree to which the director, cast and crew involved the actual men portrayed in the movie in the production. Whatever they did, it worked.
The bottom line
The critical establishment hates 13 Hours, to the point where they’re reviewing it without watching it. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is not going to give it any cookies; nobody’s transgendered or questioning, and the bad guys are Hollywood anathema, real bad guys saying bad guy stuff (“allahu akbar”) and carrying the black flag of regression. Somewhere under the LA smog, some jerk is already pitching a remake with the villains changed to European neo-nazis and a general who’s secretly the Kosmic Koalscuttle of the KKK.