Thirteen Days
New Line, 2000
Directed by Roger Donaldson

$$$1/4

Today's college freshman are not old enough to remember a world in which nuclear war was a constant threat, when the United States and the Soviet Union were constantly poised at the brink of mutually assured destruction. So, along comes the new movie Thirteen Days to show those young viewers just how perilously close their parents came to oblivion in October, 1962.

Considering the Cuban Missile Crisis was undoubtedly the most tense and suspenseful episode of the Cold War, it's somewhat surprising that it's taken nearly four decades for Hollywood to turn in the movie rendition. Sure, it's been done as a TV mini-series. But not until now, have we gotten the definitive big screen version.

But here it is, precisely restaged by director Roger Donaldson. He shows us the behind-the-scenes plotting and maneuvering, the ways in which a small handful of men, and a small handful of moments, guided the fate of the human race. We see how the Kennedys, Jack and Bobby, micromanaged the chess game with the Soviets. The movie postulates that were it not for their overreaching control of the smallest details, their subordinate war hungry generals would have plunged us all into nuclear holocaust.

The movie's biggest fault, however, rests with Kevin Costner. Mind you, it's not Costner himself who's the problem -- his Boston accent is fine and so is his acting. Rather, it's with his character, presidential advisor Kenny O'Donnell. In real life, had O'Donnell done even half the things the script wants us to believe he did, then monuments should have and would have been built to the man. But Hollywood needs a hero, one character to embody both the sharp young minds who helped save the day and the average Americans who went to bed each night for two weeks, wondering if they'd live to see the sunrise.

And so, the script turns O'Donnell into a Kevin Costner-type for us to empathize with. Still, this dramatic license aside, historians should have no major beef with the film.

Besides, the real star of the movie is Bruce Greenwood, who brings John F. Kennedy to life more accurately than any actor who's gone before. Not only is his physical resemblance striking, but Greenwood masters the subtleties of the President's voice and speech patterns better than any of Hollywood's previous JFKs. He doesn't do the standard over-the-top Boston accent. That caricature doesn't capture how the real Kennedy talked. (To see what I mean, check out Robert Drew's 1963 fly-on-the-Oval-Office-wall documentary Crisis:Behind a Presidential Commitment, I'll wager a good sum of money that Greenwood did; he seems to base his performance on the Kennedy seen in that fine film.)

Note: Sharp-eyed viewers will catch the real Kennedy on screen. JFK's nephew, Christopher Lawford, the spitting image of his father, actor Peter Lawford, has a small but pivotal role as a pilot sent on a mission to fly over Cuba.
(c) Copyright 2001