Brilliantly done cold war drama

Rating: 10/10 (6 April 2001)

"Thirteen Days" is certainly the best film that I have seen in the last 5 years and one of the best ever. Script, direction, acting, photography and sound are all top notch. Steven Culp is absolutely outstanding as Bobby Kennedy and surely deserved an Oscar. Bruce Greenwood as JFK is not far behind and almost all the smaller roles are played to perfection. Strangely, the only mediocre performance comes from Kevin Costner, who looks rather wooden most of the time. But the movie is a triumph of what I call "straightforward storytelling" which seems to be sadly lacking in these days of Tarantinos and Soderberghs. For me, the crux of the whole situation was the sequence where the President asks the destroyer commander, "Captain, can you force that Russian sub to the surface without damaging it and without damage to yourself?" In retrospect, it is a wonder that the world came through this unscathed.