Rating: 2 stars out of 4.

If director Michael Bay’s goal was making an audience feel like it sat in a movie theater for 13 hours, his newest film should be considered a success.

Unfortunately for the Transformers director, I don’t think most moviegoers are that forgiving. Despite top-notch special effects and a gripping musical score, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi is a bloated, confusing mess.

“Downtime is the worst, isn’t it?” one of the film’s heroes says toward the movie’s finale. If only screenwriter Chuck Hogan (who wrote the novel on which Ben Affleck’s excellent The Town was based) had heeded his character’s advice, 13 Hours could have been an enduring memorial to four Americans murdered by terrorists in Libya on Sept. 11, 2012.

Amid a seemingly endless array of poorly introduced “good guy” characters is a lack of interesting “bad guys.” We know that the Benghazi terrorists are evil, but we never learn much else about them. One American even says “who’s this?” while looking at a group of hostiles, which is probably the film’s most appropriate line.

As a result, 13 Hours forces viewers to sift through wreckage caused by endless explosions and largely indistinguishable characters in search of someone to root against. In the wake of last week’s tragic death of actor Alan Rickman, who unforgettably portrayed the cunning Hans Gruber in Die Hard, Hollywood should know almost 25 years later that every action movie needs a central villain.

“Action movie” is an accurate description of 13 Hours because that’s precisely what it is. While I went into the theater wanting to like this movie, I left wanting to re-watch modern war classics like Black Hawk Down, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty. Bay’s film also shrinks in comparison to action-packed emotional powerhouses like Lone Survivor (despite Bay’s attempt at recreating its superior end-of-film tribute) or American Sniper. Instead, the real-life events portrayed in 13 Hours are used as an excuse for bewildering gunfights and largely gratuitous gore.

While the film does effectively (and perhaps accidentally) convey that Benghazi was complete and utter chaos, the film holds no specific U.S. official (other than a nastily-written CIA character who is identified only as “Bob”) accountable for the deadly debacle. While no excuses for the government’s failures are made, either, 13 Hours is clearly not the movie that either side of the ongoing Benghazi debate hoped would bolster their respective arguments.

The most powerful sequence in 13 Hours occurs at the dawn of 9/11’s 11^th anniversary, which marked the final hours before the terrorist assault on U.S. compounds in Benghazi. From the morning Muslim prayer calls to an American character watching chilling footage of a plane hitting the World Trade Center, the scene is masterfully constructed and brilliantly executed.

There’s only one problem: The superb scene-setter occurs an estimated 40 minutes into the movie! The film’s prior sequences feel not only irrelevant, but marred by the aforementioned plethora of puzzling new characters. This parade of the unknowns continues throughout 13 Hours, as does the film’s relentlessly cheesy dialogue.

“Alright, weird stuff is starting to happen now,” an elite ex-special operations warrior says many hours into an attack that’s already killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. “Man, I could crush some pancakes right now,” another ex-military character randomly and painfully utters on a rooftop before the film’s last battle sequence.

Ex-Navy SEAL hero Tyrone Woods (James Badge Dale) is as close as 13 Hours comes to a protagonist, but Dale’s performance (hamstrung by a jumbled screenplay, in the actor’s defense) doesn’t endear us to his character. The rest of the cast mostly blends together amid the confusion, except for Demetrius Grosse, who gives a standout supporting performance as a Diplomatic Security Service member. Grosse’s fine work is underutilized by the filmmakers.

Faith is a spoken part of the equation for a few characters, but feels more like the screenwriter checking a box than authentic storytelling. We do learn that many of these brave men held their families dear, however, with their phone and Skype calls back home serving as the most memorable collection of moments in a largely forgettable film.

The most disappointing aspect of 13 Hours, though, is the missed opportunity to adequately honor the four Americans killed in the Benghazi attack: Stevens, Woods, Glen Doherty and Sean Smith. These selfless patriots deserved better than having their stories stuck in the albatross of another Michael Bay action movie.

“Just another Tuesday night in Benghazi,” says one ex-military character in the middle of a deadly terrorist attack. Please, Mr. Bay, save this corniness for the next Transformers movie.

Tom Sileo is a senior editor of The Stream and co-author of Brothers Forever: The Enduring Bond between a Marine and a Navy SEAL that Transcended their Ultimate Sacrifice.