KarateParty.org - Thirteen Days (2000)

****1/2 out of *****

Genres
Commies
Drama
Politics
True Story

2000
Director
Roger Donaldson
Writers
Ernest R. May/Philip D. Zelikow (book)
David Self
Cast
Kevin Costner – Kenny O'Donnell, Special Assistant to the President
Bruce Greenwood – President John F. Kennedy
Steven Culp – Attorney-General Robert F. Kennedy
Dylan Baker – Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defence
Michael Fairman – Adlai Stevenson, United States Ambassador to the United Nations

When I was a kid in the 1980s and played war games in the playgrounds of my youth, the Bad Guys were always designated as the Russians or the Germans. This, of course, wasn’t fair to the Germans (or at least those in West Germany) because they were part of the NATO alliance and they were on our side. At my young age, no-one had taken me aside and explained the ways of international politics and modern history. The Russians on the other hand – well, everyone was scared of them. People were terrified that the last thing they would see would be the flash of a nuclear detonation. Such ideas were part of the popular culture – this was the age of movies like Rambo II, Spies Like Us and WarGames.

Freud would have a field day

I was 10 years old when the Berlin Wall fell and that way of looking at the world mercifully came to an end. As I grew older, my interest in the history of the Cold War developed, and I found that my experiences weren’t even the tensest of that period. The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, when the Soviet Union stationed nuclear weapons on Cuba and the United States was none too pleased about it, stands at the peak of Cold War tensions. Roger Donaldson’s Thirteen Days (2000) portrays that tension brilliantly.

It is difficult to turn a movie based on well-known historical events into a thriller. We all know the outcome – World War Three didn’t break out. Donaldson manages to turn the movie into a standoff between the doves and the hawks. This is manifested in the relationship between President Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood) and General Curtis LeMay (Kevin Conway), the Air Force Chief of Staff. We see this again in Secretary of Defence, Bob McNamara (Dylan Baker) giving Admiral George Anderson (Madison Mason) a verbal dressing down – telling him that the way the blockade was conducted was as important as the object of preventing any further build-up of weapons on Cuba. “This is President Kennedy communicating with Secretary Khrushchev!” McNamara spits out (reminiscent of Sylvester the cat) as he points to the layout of the blockade on a wall.

President Kennedy’s inner circle is made up of his brother – the Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy (Steven Culp) and Kenny O’Donnell (Kevin Costner), Special Assistant to the President. It is around those three characters that the movie revolves – O’Donnell in particular. He is privy to the complex political machinations but he is free to walk the streets because of his anonymity. This is important because through him we see a man’s concern for the safety his own family and we have a witness to the reaction of the public at large – hungry for news, pensive and fearful. O’Donnell is not immune to these feelings either and we see him join a queue for confession at a church and later makes what he thinks may be his last phone call to his wife.

Beyond this is the diplomacy – the fear of appearing to be Chamberlain-esque appeasers looms over the diplomatic efforts and the fate of Adlai Stevenson (Michael Fairman), the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, hangs in the balance for even voicing the “cowardly” option of a deal.

There is some action in this film, but it is limited. For the most part it consists of overflights by spy planes, the fuelling of missiles and warships going to battle-stations. Roger Donaldson is not pulling a Bruckheimer on us and uses what action there is rather sparingly. Donaldson even makes the effort of establishing the pilots as characters in the film rather than rendering them as anonymous people in a cockpit – which was a possibility open to him.

As you can tell from what I’ve written, I am quite positive about Thirteen Days. With the exception of Costner, the film is cast with unknowns who are forced to rely on their acting prowess rather than star power to carry the film. Costner puts in a good performance too, although his New England accent came off a bit thick. On the downside, we don’t see the Soviet viewpoint except through diplomatic telegrams and face-to-face meetings with their American counterparts – it may have been a problem expanding on the Soviet viewpoint given that the film weighs in at a hefty 2 hours and 20 minutes. The tagline of Thirteen Days is, “You’ll never believe how close we came”. Well, now I do believe – and it was very close. Remember, the 1960 election was extremely tight with Kennedy beating his opponent by a gnat’s whisker. The Republican candidate was a fellow by the name of Richard Milhouse Nixon.

If you get the opportunity, watch the dvd. It provides a crisp presentation of the movie, but the special features really are … well … special. One of the commentary tracks even includes recordings of President Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev’s son, Sergei. In addition, there are features that look at the origins of the Cuban Missile Crisis and that look at the challenges of producing a movie so rooted in history.

See this film if you like political intrigue or modern history, or thrillers in general.

If you enjoyed any of the following:
The Hunt for Red October
JFK
Traffic
House of Cards (tv)
you will probably enjoy Thirteen Days.

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