'13 Hours' Trailer: Michael Bay's Benghazi Film Is Surprisingly Emotional, Still Has Huge Explosions

"When everything went wrong, six men had the courage to do what was right."

With 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, director Michael Bay has turned his focus away from fantasy and sci-fi and is turning his eye for tense, chaotic action toward a gritty, violent, real-life story.

13 Hours tells the story of the terrorist attack on an American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya in 2012, and the members of a security team who were tasked with defending the compound and those inside.

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In the first trailer for the gritty military drama, we are introduced to the tough, dangerous and patriotic ex-military security operatives who would fight to defend the embassy in its darkest hour.

The trailer builds, with palpable tension, to an explosion-filled crescendo of violence that is a far cry from many of the gritty, realistic war films of recent years. Relying less on the fear generated by painfully tense moments (like the first trailer for American Sniper or The Hurt Locker) and more on the blind, mad insanity we often associate with Bay's action adventure epics.

In fact, parts of the trailer make the movie look like Bad Boys 3 if Bay replaced Will Smith and Martin Lawrence with a lumbersexual Jim Halpert and five other bearded giants, and then took out all the humor and levity.

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But given the subject matter and the cast -- which includes John Krasinski, James Badge Dale and Toby Stephens -- 13 Hours could prove to be a critical success for Bay.

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi hits theaters Jan. 15, 2016.

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