Thirteen Days Directed by: Roger Donaldson Dave's Rating: A Thank God for telephones! The Cuban Missile Crisis would have been more of a fiasco than it already was without them. If you don't like talk about missiles on the phone or in person, stay away from Thirteen Days. Rarely does a film put together such a large cast and revolve them around a true-life crisis such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and keep an audience's attention for 2 1/2 hours. Thanks to a very keen sense of timing, story structure and several memorable performances, Thirteen Days works from start to finish. It's even better that the director, Roger Donaldson (No Way Out), was able to take a situation that anyone that has taken a High School American History course knows the outcome too, and turned it into a real nail biter. Time was of the essences during those thirteen days, and Donaldson uses that to his advantage more than any other technique. The film starts off with tbe detection of the nuclear weapons after they had already reached Cuba from Russia. Right away secrets and promises start to be made in clock and dagger fashion in Washington. There's people that worked in the White House that didn't even know what was going on up until the time John Kennedy gave the first television announcement of the situation. The first part of the film revolves around John (Bruce Greenwood) and Bobby Kennedy (Steven Culp), along with John's right hand man, Kenny O'Donnell, played here with a Bostonian accent laden Kevin Costner, matching wits against the military and political heavy weights. The entire film revolves around meetings with all the President's major decision makers, and there's a comfort in each of these meetings, because the audience learns all the incoming information along with the characters. The film does an excellent job dissecting the layers of bureaucracy, and the best scenes are not The Americans vs. The Russians, it's the scenes in which it's The Kennedys vs. The President's Officials. It often ends up playing like a modern film version of 12 Angry Men set in the political throes of Washington. One might find it amazing that the top bill man, Costner, actually fades into the background quite often. This is mostly an ensemble piece, and so much is happening at once that it would have been a serious flaw to the film to focus on the Costner character any more than it already does. One of the only aspects that I felt scarred JFK was the constant scenes of Costner's Jim Garrison feuding with his wife played by Sissy Spacek. The audience only has to put up with the domestic life of Costner's character's family being disrupted by the long hours of working for the system in Thirteen Days up to a small point, and that helps the film more than it hurts it. This is a film about America, the Government, and World Relations. Not about whether or not Daddy is home at 5 p.m. or at 2:30 in the morning to help feed the baby. Hell, we only see Jackie Kennedy once at the beginning of the film, and it's little things like this that make a serious film like Thirteen Days better in terms of story and plot. It would be easy to get lost in a film like this with all the "who is who" problem running rampant for at least the first hour. Luckily there are on screen titles given to most of the major government officials, but sometimes even that got confusing. It's nice to be challenged, but even if you are up on the history of the crisis you might still found yourself confused at points on what exactly each person's position is. The person who steals the film in my opinion is Steven Culp, who plays Robert Kennedy. He's a dead ringer when it comes to the look, the dialect, and the overall persona he gives off. Bruce Greenwood who plays Jack Kennedy gives a great performance as well but is too often reserved. I was not aware the Kennedys were such hard drinkers, and there is a lot of guzzling going on, but can you blame them? There are several outbursts in this film, the best by actor Dylan Baker, who plays Robert McNamara, an official giving play by play from the Pentagon. There is also a wonderful scene that takes place at a United Nation's Hearing that shows that yes, even politicians have a sense of humor. Most of the other actors are the typical government and military character actors you are used to seeing in films like this, but everyone seems to be totally into their roles and nothing is beyond belief. Another aspect that plays well in the film is Donaldson's use of stock footage interspersed within the film, and often times he switches back and forth between black and white stock with color. There's a football motif hidden in the film that plays under the assumption that war is much like a game of sport. It's all a matter of who's on whose team, and who's got the ball. Thirteen Days is not only a great American film, but it's also a well constructed ensemble piece that keeps you guessing even when you know all the answers in the first place.
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