YMMV / 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

• Americans Hate Tingle:
  • When the film came out in the states, the Rotten Tomatoes score was bordering on a 59 to 60%, which by Michael Bay standards is pretty great. However, once British critics got their word in, the score went straight down to the 51% it is now.
  • As you'd imagine Libyans weren't terribly flattered by this films depiction of them and their country. With Libya's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Salah Belnaba, going so far as to denounce the film's portrayal of his countrymen and described it as "fanatical and ignorant".
• Audience-Alienating Premise: Due to the highly volatile subject matter and having someone like Bay behind the director's chair (not to mention the last time he did a war film), it's understandable for some to feel a little bit iffy on the film itself. This actually lead to the film being a flop at the box office, not to mention unusually stiff competition on its opening weekend. Not helping matters was the limp wide release of the movie, not even reaching the number of theaters that other contemporary war films like Lone Survivor or American Sniper did.
• Awesome Music:
  • Lorne Balfe's score for the movie is definitely one of the film's strong points, managing to be nail-bitingly intense, kick-ass, and dramatic all at the same time. Special mention goes to "Welcome to Benghazi", "Burn Them Out", "Engage Direct", and "The Teams" for the action-packed ones.
  • Chris Cornell's Til The Sun Comes Back Around.
  • "Forgotten" also deserves a mention.
• Critical Dissonance: Par for the course for a film directed by Michael Bay, whose loud, big-budget, mainstream action films typically have a gulf of 20-30% between critical and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes. This film earned a 51% from critics and 84% from audiences, which actually makes it Bay's highest-rated film since Transformers (2007).
• Memetic Mutation: The fact that David Denman and John Krasinski are in this film together resulted in memes claiming it was actually about Roy and Jim putting aside their differences to rescue Pam from terrorists.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Not only was this a film about a controversial foreign incident, it was also released during an extremely contentious election year. Debates over whether it was a Propaganda Piece or an average Hollywood Dramatization raged, often overtaking discussion of the film's overall quality.
• Paranoia Fuel: The Americans have virtually no reliable way to tell friendlies and bad guys apart due to the fact that none of the combatants are in uniform. The chaotic nature of the firefights doesn't help one bit and many times the protagonists remark that they could have walked by several terrorists masquerading as allies and not know until they actually become hostile.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: The film is generally light on the greater politics surrounding the event ^note it briefly shows that intelligence reports warned of an attack and the backlash to the Secretary of State was mentioned, although it didn't mention Hillary Clinton by name, focusing mostly on the defense efforts in the moment, but the situation itself is so charged many claimed it was propaganda in an election year.