Thirteen Days «««½
PG-13, 145m. 2000
Cast & Credits: Kevin Costner (Kenneth P. O’Donnell), Bruce Greenwood (John F. Kennedy), Steven Culp (Robert F. Kennedy), Dylan Baker (Robert McNamara), Michael Fairman (Adlai Stevenson), Henry Strozier (Dean Rusk), Lucinda Jenny (Helen O’Donnell). Screenplay by David Self based on the book, “The Kennedy Tapes – Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis” by Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow. Directed by Roger Donaldson.
Midway through Thirteen Days are scenes of old black and white news footage showing how Americans reacted when Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev ordered nuclear missiles to be placed in Cuba ninety miles away from Florida in October 1962. The unprecedented move was called The Cuban Missile Crisis.
The footage shows students getting under their desks during practice drills, families hurrying to their own private nuclear fallout shelters in backyards and people cleaning out the local grocery stores buying canned goods and water.
At one point, Kenny O’Donnell (Kevin Costner), special assistant to the president of the United States, while on his way home, walks past a local church offering confessions 24 hours a day. He hesitates a second and then gets in line with the rest of group.
I wasn’t born yet when The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred. Those scenes I saw in Thirteen Days were similar to the ones I saw in the then controversial 1983 made-for-tv movie, The Day After, which showed how Americans in Kansas cope after a full scale nuclear war. The results weren’t encouraging.
During my senior year in high school, the two topics we studied in Social Issues were the devastating effects AIDS has on the human body and what happens during a full scale nuclear attack and the aftermath. I was more afraid of the bomb than I was of getting AIDS. I took great comfort should we one day get into another nuclear confrontation that if this time can’t be averted, I won’t have to live through the aftermath since I live less than thirty minutes away from what is presumably target zero; downtown Dallas.
Watching Thirteen Days, I understood what Americans went through at the time and why they reacted the way they did. We know today sitting under a desk in school if the bomb goes off is as futile as building your own nuclear fallout shelter. People back then, however, took it seriously.
President Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood) and his administration’s game plan on where to go if the missiles launched was, in the words of Attorney General Robert Kennedy (Steven Culp) “a comfort zone” for one’s families.
“The reality is the missiles would be here in five minutes,” the attorney general tells O’Donnell as the confrontation draws near.
I got the feeling of a false sense of security watching the film or the notion I couldn’t believe World War III was staring us right in the face. I put the possibility in the back of my mind saying it won’t happen much the way JFK does at one point.
The Cuban Missile Crisis has been dramatized several times before over the past thirty years in either a mini-series about the president or a movie about those tense two weeks. The most popular is The Missiles of October (1974) which starred William Devane as JFK and Martin Sheen as Robert Kennedy. That film was a play-by-play account of how both the American and Russian governments handled the situation.
The action, however, in Thirteen Days isn’t limited though to the goings-on inside the White House. There are shots of tankers on their way to Cuba. Cuban armies building missile sites as American spy planes hover over taking pictures (one plane boasts the sign that says “Smile you’re on candid camera” underneath the cockpit) intercut with sometimes humorous, sometimes confrontational scenes of one-on-one discussions between O’Donnell and the two brothers.
The film introduces a number of noteworthy contributors to history who I’d have no idea who they are without their slug-lines listed at the bottom the screens. People like Defense Secretary Robert McNamara (Dylan Baker) who monitors the situation in Cuba from a naval base while keeping a close eye on the nation’s military leaders making sure they abide by the president’s decision not to fire.
There is also Adlai Stevenson (Michael Fairman) who during a meeting of the United Nations says he’ll wait as long as he has to until the Russians admit they have missiles in Cuba.
Like a few of Oliver Stone’s movies, Thirteen Days sometimes reverts to black and white as though director Roger Donaldson (No Way Out - 1987) is saying, "this is how I think this happened." As usual, historians will note the O’Donnell character didn’t play a pivotal role in the missile crisis. His voice is hardly heard in the 1997 book, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, edited by Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow.
Among the performances by the three leads, Costner, just like he did in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) and in Stone’s JFK (1991), once again shows he can’t make an accent sound convincing. I did, however, get used to the way he talks after a while. Costner’s O’Donnell is like a bodyguard to the Kennedys allowing government officials and military generals utter their views yet making them keep their distance from the president. If this were a movie about an Italian crime family, the O’Donnell character would be the equivalent of Robert Duvall’s Tom Hagen in The Godfather (1972), acting as adviser or in Italian terms, consigliere.
Greenwood (Double Jeopardy - 1999), who hardly looks like the late president, doesn’t even try to mimic JFK’s Boston accent (William Devane was probably the closest JFK look alike to date). Greenwood does what Anthony Hopkins playing Richard Nixon in Stone’s 1995 presidential epic. He captures JFK’s mannerisms incorporating his quick wit and how every time you saw him in meetings, he was always sitting in a rocking chair due to back problems.
Culp on the other hand is a dead ringer for Robert Kennedy who is seen often slightly hunched with his arms folded as he chats with his brother outside the White House (just like in pictures) and a voice that sounds almost like that of the real attorney general.
A movie like Thirteen Days often brings up the question, why make another film about the same subject? Who’s going to want to see something that happened almost 40 years ago is the question I have been asked.
The answer to that is the subject matter is still timely. While it is true the world can likely be wiped out in a matter of weeks or months using chemical weapons, the nuclear threat still looms. India and Pakistan now have the bomb. Although Russia is no longer considered to be our greatest threat, China and North Korea are.
Thirteen Days is a reminder or perhaps a warning that even in this new millennium, there could still come a day when as one character in the film put it, two nations will be “standing eyeball to eyeball” and the world will wonder which country will blink.
©1/24/01
PG-13, 145m. 2000
Cast & Credits: Kevin Costner (Kenneth P. O’Donnell), Bruce Greenwood (John F. Kennedy), Steven Culp (Robert F. Kennedy), Dylan Baker (Robert McNamara), Michael Fairman (Adlai Stevenson), Henry Strozier (Dean Rusk), Lucinda Jenny (Helen O’Donnell). Screenplay by David Self based on the book, “The Kennedy Tapes – Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis” by Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow. Directed by Roger Donaldson.
The footage shows students getting under their desks during practice drills, families hurrying to their own private nuclear fallout shelters in backyards and people cleaning out the local grocery stores buying canned goods and water.
At one point, Kenny O’Donnell (Kevin Costner), special assistant to the president of the United States, while on his way home, walks past a local church offering confessions 24 hours a day. He hesitates a second and then gets in line with the rest of group.
I wasn’t born yet when The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred. Those scenes I saw in Thirteen Days were similar to the ones I saw in the then controversial 1983 made-for-tv movie, The Day After, which showed how Americans in Kansas cope after a full scale nuclear war. The results weren’t encouraging.
During my senior year in high school, the two topics we studied in Social Issues were the devastating effects AIDS has on the human body and what happens during a full scale nuclear attack and the aftermath. I was more afraid of the bomb than I was of getting AIDS. I took great comfort should we one day get into another nuclear confrontation that if this time can’t be averted, I won’t have to live through the aftermath since I live less than thirty minutes away from what is presumably target zero; downtown Dallas.
Watching Thirteen Days, I understood what Americans went through at the time and why they reacted the way they did. We know today sitting under a desk in school if the bomb goes off is as futile as building your own nuclear fallout shelter. People back then, however, took it seriously.
President Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood) and his administration’s game plan on where to go if the missiles launched was, in the words of Attorney General Robert Kennedy (Steven Culp) “a comfort zone” for one’s families.
“The reality is the missiles would be here in five minutes,” the attorney general tells O’Donnell as the confrontation draws near.
I got the feeling of a false sense of security watching the film or the notion I couldn’t believe World War III was staring us right in the face. I put the possibility in the back of my mind saying it won’t happen much the way JFK does at one point.
The Cuban Missile Crisis has been dramatized several times before over the past thirty years in either a mini-series about the president or a movie about those tense two weeks. The most popular is The Missiles of October (1974) which starred William Devane as JFK and Martin Sheen as Robert Kennedy. That film was a play-by-play account of how both the American and Russian governments handled the situation.
The action, however, in Thirteen Days isn’t limited though to the goings-on inside the White House. There are shots of tankers on their way to Cuba. Cuban armies building missile sites as American spy planes hover over taking pictures (one plane boasts the sign that says “Smile you’re on candid camera” underneath the cockpit) intercut with sometimes humorous, sometimes confrontational scenes of one-on-one discussions between O’Donnell and the two brothers.
The film introduces a number of noteworthy contributors to history who I’d have no idea who they are without their slug-lines listed at the bottom the screens. People like Defense Secretary Robert McNamara (Dylan Baker) who monitors the situation in Cuba from a naval base while keeping a close eye on the nation’s military leaders making sure they abide by the president’s decision not to fire.
There is also Adlai Stevenson (Michael Fairman) who during a meeting of the United Nations says he’ll wait as long as he has to until the Russians admit they have missiles in Cuba.
Like a few of Oliver Stone’s movies, Thirteen Days sometimes reverts to black and white as though director Roger Donaldson (No Way Out - 1987) is saying, "this is how I think this happened." As usual, historians will note the O’Donnell character didn’t play a pivotal role in the missile crisis. His voice is hardly heard in the 1997 book, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, edited by Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow.
Among the performances by the three leads, Costner, just like he did in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) and in Stone’s JFK (1991), once again shows he can’t make an accent sound convincing. I did, however, get used to the way he talks after a while. Costner’s O’Donnell is like a bodyguard to the Kennedys allowing government officials and military generals utter their views yet making them keep their distance from the president. If this were a movie about an Italian crime family, the O’Donnell character would be the equivalent of Robert Duvall’s Tom Hagen in The Godfather (1972), acting as adviser or in Italian terms, consigliere.
Greenwood (Double Jeopardy - 1999), who hardly looks like the late president, doesn’t even try to mimic JFK’s Boston accent (William Devane was probably the closest JFK look alike to date). Greenwood does what Anthony Hopkins playing Richard Nixon in Stone’s 1995 presidential epic. He captures JFK’s mannerisms incorporating his quick wit and how every time you saw him in meetings, he was always sitting in a rocking chair due to back problems.
Culp on the other hand is a dead ringer for Robert Kennedy who is seen often slightly hunched with his arms folded as he chats with his brother outside the White House (just like in pictures) and a voice that sounds almost like that of the real attorney general.
A movie like Thirteen Days often brings up the question, why make another film about the same subject? Who’s going to want to see something that happened almost 40 years ago is the question I have been asked.
The answer to that is the subject matter is still timely. While it is true the world can likely be wiped out in a matter of weeks or months using chemical weapons, the nuclear threat still looms. India and Pakistan now have the bomb. Although Russia is no longer considered to be our greatest threat, China and North Korea are.
Thirteen Days is a reminder or perhaps a warning that even in this new millennium, there could still come a day when as one character in the film put it, two nations will be “standing eyeball to eyeball” and the world will wonder which country will blink.
©1/24/01
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