thirteen days

Thirteen Days - Roger Donaldson

Thirteen Days retells of the thirteen fateful days during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 wherein the world braced itself for a would-be nuclear standoff between USA and USSR. It's not so much of a political thriller, but it borders on it anyway, taking the liberty of distorting an iota of historical fact in order to give a sense of camp entertainment. Kevin Costner stars as Kenneth O' Donnell, the Special Assistant to JFK, a man whose job is to keep his president on the right track even if means covering up JFK's mistakes. However the film portrays the Kennedys and O'Donnel a good light contrary to Seymour Hersh's expose of their malevolent deeds in his book The Dark Side of Camelot. Anyway, the movie somehow manages to vindicate them of what Hersh had revealed, but it in some way presents their weakness--a terrible muddle in decision making that nearly put the situation out of hand. Bruce Greenwood plays a believable JFK, and Steven Culp's RFK justifies what the man was to his older brother. Costner, beyond the phony Boston accent and the role O'Donnell played during the crisis (which plenty of historians rebuffed saying O'Donnell didn't even give a damn about the events) redeems him of his previous cinematic failures. Thirteen Days is an entertaining political/historical thriller that deserves even a single peek.