With all the melodrama that has paid lip service to the Kennedy administration, “Thirteen Days” stands alone as a film that gives its audience a reason to laud the 35th president.
“Thirteen Days,” released by New Line Cinema, focuses on the Cuban Missile Crisis, a 13-day nuclear showdown in October 1962 between the United States and Russia. Tension mounts after U.S. military surveillance discovers that Russia is installing nuclear warheads in Cuba. For the next 13 days, president John F. Kennedy, played exceptionally by Bruce Greenwood, and his advisers must decide how to respond with the threat of a looming nuclear war.
The crisis unfolds through the eyes of special assistant to the president Kenny O’Donnell, who is played by Kevin Costner. Thankfully Coster is a quiet observer who serves as the president’s political conscience because listening to Costner’s impression of a New England accent is painful.
Costner’s character was supposed to have grown up in a Bostonian middle class family and through hard work befriended the president and his brother, attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, played by Steven Culp. However, Costner clearly tried too hard and his accent came across as robotic. Dialogue did not roll off his tongue and just sounded like a really bad impression of “The Simpson’s” Mayor Quimby.
Culp and Greenwood succeed at arguably the film’s most difficult task in portraying John and Robert Kennedy. The Kennedys have been icons for more than 60 years, yet Culp and Greenwood manage to achieve something that alludes Costner — keeping it simple and playing the characters as regular people facing tough decisions, not as heroes.
On the positive side, by using Costner’s character as the vehicle to move the film, director Roger Donaldson steers away from traditional documentary-style pitfalls with characters speaking to the camera. Instead, the audience is a privileged fly on the wall with almost unlimited access.
The Kennedy brothers are pushed by the military brass to take swift, aggressive action by invading Cuba, disabling the missiles and taking control of the island.
The president and his brother, leery following the Bay of Pigs debacle, hold out to see if diplomacy will work, but the situation grows more tenuous because the missiles will soon be operational and poised to obliterate most of the United States.
With the Kennedy administration quickly running out of options, tension builds and a decision that would forever change the future of the United States must be made.
The large supporting cast rises to the challenge in portraying the real players behind the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff are great as the trigger-happy group that is overzealous in defending its country.
Dylan Baker plays Robert McNamara and bears a striking resemblance to the former secretary of defense.
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Michael Fairman does a stunning job as Adlai Stevenson, the United Nations ambassador who is on his last legs politically but proves that he still has one more life in him.
The cast dwarfs the special effects, which are phenomenal, but the emphasis of this film is clearly on the people behind a true turning point in U.S. history. The extensive plane shots and amazing images of the atomic bomb are the perfect complement to the cast and are a dark reminder of a looming threat.
“Thirteen Days” also strategically uses music rather than gratuitous shooting and explosions the way a traditional action thriller does to build the suspense that is the centerpiece of its plot.
I cannot vouch for the film’s historical accuracy, but it is clear that the producers went to great lengths to do a good job of depicting the events and people who lived the nightmare of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
If the film did not mirror history in every way, it is only guilty of improving it.
