Thirteen Days was a fine dramatization of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Rating: 10/10 (31 October 2008)

Earlier this month I visited my sister in Maryland, to see her first-born child, a boy, get baptized. While there, her husband showed this historical drama to me, my mother, and my other brother-in-law. We were all enthralled at the drama of what happened over 40 years ago being played on the just-unwrapped DVD. Seeing Keven Costner, as White House consultant Kenny O'Donnell, speaking in the same accent and mannerisms of the Kennedy brothers Jack (Bruce Greenwood) and Bobby (Steven Culp who I didn't recognize as the same actor that played Rex on "Desparate Housewives") made me almost forget his movie star magnetism. Also fine in their real-life roles were Dylan Baker as Robert McNamara and Michael Fairman as Adlai Stevenson. Director Roger Donaldson takes his time in depicting the title's events that, no matter what one knows of the outcome, still provides some suspenseful turns as well as also explaining how and why certain results became. I was especially impressed at how Culp as Bobby was seeming so impatient with the way Stevenson as a UN ambassador was slowly taking his time with the Soviet premier. Maybe Donaldson was a bit much with a couple of shots of the nuclear film footage inserted but overall, I'd say Thirteen Days was an excellent depiction of how close to World War III our country was during what must have been very tense days of October 1962.