Thirteen Days | | Cast : | Kevin Costner, Bruce Greenwood | | Director : | Roger Donaldson | | Studio : | New Line Home Entertainment | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | January 12, 2001 | | DVD Released Date : | February 03, 2004 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 25, 2005 | | Summary | A fine dramatization of the Cuban Missile Crisis from the Whitehouse Perspective | Content
 | I was eight years old when this crisis gripped the country. I remember watching news shows that showed maps and the blast range if an atomic warhead went off in a given city. My friends and I talked about what a mushroom cloud might look like. This movie is a dramatization of what went on in the Kennedy Whitehouse during those thirteen days of the crisis in October 1962 and how close we really came to the Cold War turning hot with awful consequences.
It does portray the Kennedys as the heroes and the generals and the intelligence community as the villains who were trying to provoke a confrontation with the soviets. That is a bit simplistic and provided for clear dramatic narrative, but it does provide insight into how difficult it is for any President to control the Washington bureaucracy. (Can you imagine how much harder it is today given its growth since 1962?!?!?)
The way the movie portrays the way Kennedy and Khrushchev were trying to signal each other and all the unknowns that both sides faced is also well done. Since this is the crisis from the perspective of the Whitehouse, there is nothing from the Soviet side except as their emissaries interacted with those in the administration. We struggle with the Kennedys and their advisors to figure out what is going on.
As an aside, the book "One Hell of a Gamble" does a fabulous job in telling the story of the crisis in a much better context than this movie does. It includes the way Castro made things more difficult. It also shows Khrushchev struggling with his constituencies just as JFK and Bobby were. You can see my review of that book on Amazon.com as well.
Kevin Costner plays an adviser to the Kennedys and does a good job as the vehicle for carrying the drama. The choices for JFK and Bobby are also good. This is a movie I think every American should see and think through what nearly happened and why. I also recommend reading the book I mention above. The movie flips into Black & White sequences and I am never sure exactly why it does. To give it a period feel because we watched television in B&W in those days? A documentary feel? To keep our attention?
It is a much better movie than I expected. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 26, 2005 | | Summary | The Nuclear Showdown with the Russians | Content
| Though the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian attack on the Israelis in the Yom Kippur War of October, 1973 (another "Missiles of October", eh?) was perhaps the closest we came to nuclear war recently, October, 1962 was definitely the most frightening for Americans. This film is an excellent docu-drama on those events.
That being said, let me get my few complaints outta the way first. I like Kevin Costner, but the accent was a mistake. It comes and goes and is somewhat distracting.
Also, while starting the film in black and white gives the fade to historical events a retro feel, it should have been done only once, at the beginning and fade in the color for the rest of the film, as many films have done. The director kept using this technique and it's also distracting, like turning a light switch on and off while watching TV (or a fading signal).
The DVD is somewhat akward to navigate and the options are also limited, in regard to languages and subtitles.
On the plus side, the special effects are pretty good, including those of the U-2's in flight, the accuracy of the aircraft (B-52's, A-4's, F-4's, A-7's, etc.) though the A-7's are obviously not running but use camera angles and towed aircraft to simulate taxiing. CGI is used for many of the flight scenes as with the U-2 flight sequences. Bruce Greenwood does a decent job as President Kennedy. And the actors who portrayed McGeorge Bundy, Robert McNamara, Bobby Kennedy (whose accent also slips a bit), General Curtis LeMay, and Pierre Salinger are also excellently cast. In fact, casting was very good for this film.
Overall it's a great film. It has a PG rating for language and I'm not sure current American generations will really understand the gravity of the situation portrayed in the film. It's also an interesting look at President Kennedy, who only had 13 more months to live (November, 1963), ending in yet another dramatic episode of 1960's America. And then Bobby Kennedy would die in 1968, assassinated by Palestinian gunman Sirhan Sirhan.
Despite the flaws, I recommend the film as it captures the events and the mood of 1962 nicely. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 21, 2005 | | Summary | A fascinating, historical film... | Content
| Snubbed by the Academy Awards, Thirteen Days is one of the best films of 2000. Valuable for its historical accuracy alone, Thirteen Days chronicles the pivotal moments of the Cuban Missile crisis in October of 1962. Unlike countless films before it, Thirteen Days creates a true edge-of-your-seat atmosphere even through scenes with little or no physical action (i.e., common dialogue and men gathered around tables), and the film manages to maintain a certain level of suspense even though the audience knows the final outcome...
Kenny O'Donnell (Kevin Costner), Special Assistant to the President, is caught up in one of the greatest crises in human history when a conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union threatens to spark a nuclear war. When the CIA informs President John F. Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood) that the Soviet Union is secretly attempting to set up nuclear missile launch sites on the island of Cuba, the president must quickly determine which decisions will protect United States interests and avert an unprecedented nuclear war.
Surrounded by top aides, President Kennedy must choose between a series of options that include sanctions, a naval blockade of Cuba, and an all-out invasion of the Caribbean island. Ultimately, Kennedy chooses a naval blockade. But Soviet vessels have already set sail for Cuba. Will they run the blockade? Will they turn back? In the end, the president must rely on a historic United Nations presentation by US Ambassador Adlai Stevenson (Michael Fairman), cool negotiations from his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (Steven Culp), and quite a bit of divine intervention to avoid what will be an inevitable civilization ending war in the absence of perfect decision-making...
Although Kevin Costner fulfills his role well in Thirteen Days, I personally found it quite annoying listening to his hackneyed fake Bostonian accent. It's so out-of-the-ordinary (perhaps because audiences are already so familiar with Costner) that it detracts from one's ability to enjoy the film. This is truly sad, because Thirteen Days showcases extraordinary performances by Bruce Greenwood and Steven Culp in their portrayals of John and Robert Kennedy. Perhaps it's the magnitude of what's at stake in the storyline, but Greenwood and Culp are so convincing that the viewer almost begins to see them as the genuine articles.
Given the subject matter, Thirteen Days is one of those rare films that can ratchet up the tension even in its down scenes. Perhaps for psychological reasons, audiences tend to become more involved in books and films which tackle actual true-to-life events. Thirteen Days deals with a short period when the world came within a hair's width of nuclear annihilation and that makes for a movie wrought with far more tension that your typical drama. You won't want to miss this film. Because of its outstanding ability to capture onscreen one of the pivotal turning points of human history, Thirteen Days is a definite must-see movie...
The DVD Report |
| Rating | | | Date | April 18, 2005 | | Summary | Hollywood History. | Content
| I was prepared to give this flick the benefit of the doubt, but an over-arching Hollywood phoniness undermines historical discussion.
The script appears to tell the history of the Cuban Missile Crisis from the viewpoint of Kevin O'Donnell (Costner), a political advisor whom the script places at all high-level meetings. Instead, the script inverts the perspective: Costner's character becomes the pivotal character of the story, such that instead of showing us the crisis through his eyes, his POV becomes the story itself and places the near Armageddon into the status of a running sub-plot. It's O'Donnell who gives a pep talk to Adlai Stevenson prior to Stevenson's famous showdown with the Russians at the UN; it's O'Donnell who gives a pep-talk to the luckless U-2 pilot immediately before he flies a doomed mission over Cuba; when a mysterious Russian appears, claiming to have a secret connection to Khrushchev, one that Americans can use to by-pass the military hawks of both countries, it's O'Donnell who verifies link by proving that the Russian served under Khrushchev in WWII; when RFK heads off for his fateful meeting with the Soviet Ambassador (Elya Baskin), who do you think is driving?; O'Donnell gets all the historically pivotal quotes, about the uncertainty of the situation, the stand-off between the White House and the Military, about America in the eyes of the world. It's not impossible to make O'Donnell the center of the story without making him the centerpiece of history - but the script decides against that almost immediately.
"Thirteen Days" is also weighed down by its heavy-handed take on the nation's military - stuffed hawk's waiting WWIII with baited breath. Generals like Curtis LeMay are typically the villains in lore of the crisis - no less so than the Soviets, and the White House had to face them down at least as much. The film lampoons cold-war era hawks for their simplistic view of nuclear war and the Soviets, yet easily adopts a similarly black&white attitude against our own generals. At the very least, the film makes our military leadership look like idiots, with Robert McNamara having to tell USN officers how their Soviet counterparts might interpret warning shots. While there was much evidence substantiating that view, "Thirteen Days" isn't interested in proving an historical case, and leaves little room for dissent. The script's message, repeatedly hammered on us, is that America's civilian leadership narrowly saved the world from a thermonuclear war by carefully steering a course past the militaries of both countries - the actors who play Maxwell Taylor and Curtis LeMay blithely plan for a war they think is unavoidable. (The point is ironically made while Kennedy and the Chiefs of Staff discuss possible reprisals following the shoot-down of the U-2; the military amiably accepts the President's refusal to strike back, knowing that "we'll just kick their [tails] on Monday", the deadline for WWIII.
While fans of this flick will alternatively excuse historical lapses because of the film's dramatic qualities, or ask the rest of us to overlook its thin melodrama for the sake of history, "13" fails at both because its characters lack any of the nuance essential in both in-depth historical analysis and superior drama. The film never even answers a question it unintentionally raises - if our military was about as bad as the Soviet generals, maybe that had more to do with getting the Russians to back down than the film's implicit answer - that the civilian leaders of both superpowers were good men surrounded by warmongers. The script also overlooks the importance of the U-2 shoot down as a wake-up call to the Russians (death is always a great wake-up call). Instead, the film implausibly credits a back-room deal in which the Yanks agreed to remove Jupiter missiles from Turkey. Yanking the Jupiters out of Turkey always struck me as a non-event in the overall crisis - the obsolete rockets were going to be scrapped anyway, and the conditions of the deal allowed the Americans to avoid any admission that they were backing down to induce the Russians to do the same in Cuba. In other words, why would the Russians back down as part of an agreement that gave them little political or military capital? Playing up the deal only substantiates Curt LeMay's insistence (if the flick is to be believed) that the Russians had to be dictated to rather than negotiated with. The rest of the film also suffers from Hollywood's general inability to craft historical characters who can speak in anything but historically significant dialog (RFK's car trip to the Soviet Embassy seems a good example - it's then that he confides his insecurities. "I was never supposed to be the smart one", he laments, obviously feeling less than up to the task of saving the world from WWIII).
That said, "Thirteen Days" is not a bad film. It's not historically inaccurate - merely a better-than-average Hollywood stab at history, one that should inspire you to look deeper into history than Hollywood will go. |
| Rating | | | Date | March 29, 2005 | | Summary | Let the Countdown Begin | Content
| Remember Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves and the hub-bub that surrounded the lack of English accent by Robin Hood himself, Kevin Costner? Well, here is the absolute opposite sort of mistake.
The accent.
For this post-cold-war baby, Thirteen Days was legitimately interesting.The movie tells of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the days surrounding thedecisions Kennedy has to make, all the while knowing that Russia and Cubahad missiles aimed at the United States. Bruce Greenwood, in his role asJack Kennedy, looks and sounds eerily like the former president. Not to beoutdone, Costner, who plays Kenneth P. O'Donnel, Special Assistantto the President, develops his own Bostonian accent. Now either people fromBoston talk really annoyingly and I have just never noticed it before, ORCostner does a pretty terrible job at the accent. Either way, it'sdistracting.
Anyway, back to the actual content of them film. Oh, but wait. While getting past Costner's hackneyed accent attempt might be doable, what is not is the stupid boom that comes into view, oh, say TWENTY TIMES!!! (A boomis the microphone that would be held over the actors' heads to helppick up their audio, but which you should never see in a movie.)
One last distraction is Director Roger Donaldson's lack of initiative to decide whether the film is black and white or in color. Skipping backand forth is just a frustration to watch.
There really is a plot to Thirteen Days and its too bad that it gets buried under distractions, because the storyline of the movie is presented really well. The politics of Jack versus Bobby Kennedy and how that played out through the whole Kennedy administration is portrayed very clearly as is the political Get-the-Red-Commies political atmosphere of the time period.
David Self, who wrote the script to Thirteen Days, never should have bothered with his work though. Who will see what he wrote amidst all the distractions? |
|
Picture 01 (20)
