SummaryA dramatization of what took place in the White House as John F. Kennedy (Greenwood) learns the news that Cuba has missiles. The film is seen through the eyes of the Chief of Staff (Costner).
SummaryA dramatization of what took place in the White House as John F. Kennedy (Greenwood) learns the news that Cuba has missiles. The film is seen through the eyes of the Chief of Staff (Costner).
The biggest draw? It is how he spreads the tension that was experienced in those 13 days of yore, in which the threat of a nuclear war became palpable. One of Kevin Costner's most memorable roles.
Plays like a very good TV movie. Short on visual flair and starpower, Thirteen Days is not the definitive story of the Cuban missile crisis, but it's an engrossing historical lesson nonetheless.
Like President Kennedy, director Donaldson (who made "No Way Out," another pretty good Washington-seat-of-power thriller) has found a perfect balance of often-opposing forces: between recorded history and the demands of plain old entertainment.
This overdone project dissipates its energy in strange ways (sudden shifts to black-and-white, as though hailing the spirit of Oliver Stone and that other Costner JFK movie), and makes you wish its makers had shown the same restraint the government did during the crisis.
Led by strong performances by Greenwood and Culp, Thirteen Days is an interesting and taught political drama, even if the final outcome is known to all (hint we weren't all incinerated by mutual nuclear destruction). In addition to the Kennedy administration, the narrative covers the roles of both the military and US UN representatives in the crisis. I've always thought that the roles of military personnel in movies is clichéd in the manner they always push for war, but seeing as this film depicts actual events (according to the source book) it turns out that that is actually the case. In fact, in this case the military chiefs repeatedly undermine JFK's restrained by not cancelling a planned atom bomb test or spy flights close to the Soviet Union.
The script faithfully recreates actual speeches given by JFK during the crisis, 'not merely peace in our time but peace for all time' and both Greenwood and Culp accurately nail the Boston Irish accent of the Kennedy family. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the film's lead and producer, Kevin Costner. His accent veers from credible to laughable to non-existent during the film and his failings are only highlighted by his co-stars' performances.
Even with its occasional stylistic missteps and pacing issues, "Thirteen Days" still grips the audience and solidly establishes its worth as a tense and morally complex political period drama.
Not a bad movie. I did enjoy it. It's tense and entertaining, but also frustrating in its glorification of a time in history when the U.S. and Russia craved conflict just for ''politics'' even though the world was at stake.