Hollywood Story

Rating: Null/10 (15 February 2006)

It's a sad day in history when people watch a movie and think they're seeing history. Completely forgetting that Hollywood are not about to give them facts if said facts make them uncomfortable and not wanting to come back for more.
It's a sad day when people can't do their own research - especially today when the resources of the World Wide Web stand at everyone's disposal.
But in the gung-ho mindset of the US, it's perhaps not surprising. Hollywood is more liberal than a lot of people think, but that doesn't mean they're about to tell the truth if said truth should in any way interfere with their box office.
There is a clear agenda here - and considering the real story of this historical event, there is a thin line one must tread, as going too far in making the actual facts all too explicit could easily alienate the charged audience. Hollywood knows cinema at their level can't be scandalous - and yet to tell the true story of this 'Cuban missile crisis' at such a level of exposure would have caused a scandal.
In 1961 the United States committed an act of aggression against the Soviet Union. The US deployed fifteen intermediate range nuclear missiles closer to the Turkish border, directly threatening cities in the Soviet Union.
Soviet strategists tried to achieve equality by placing missiles in Cuba. The crisis was finally resolved when Khrushchev, after waving the big stick, started dangling the carrot: if the US backed their missiles in Turkey, he'd remove the weapons in Cuba. He even let the US look the heroes - and in this concession won disfavour with his own back home who didn't see as he should have done that.
But hawks were on both sides of this conflict, as the movie shows. What it does not show however is the actual truth of the story. In typical Hollywood fashion things are made up and the US have to look good by the final credits. When in fact if the mad brass in the Pentagon hadn't been pushing so hard all along, the entire affair would have been avoided and that generation would have been spared one major scare.
This cannot come forth in a Hollywood movie. Of course it can't. And many of the reviewers who have colleagues at their offices who know the full score don't even know it because it's kept conveniently from public sight as much as possible - it finds its way to the back page of newspapers and history books lots of those 'god fearing' people in the US don't want their poor children to read.
And yet the facts stand for themselves. One need only wander over to Wikipedia to read the 'real' story without the Hollywood trimmings and falsehoods. A great crisis was brought on the world because of a bunch of mad generals in Washington - and the worst of it is they probably never regretted it, probably never woke up and realised what they'd attempted to perpetrate.
The movie does give adequate insight into the kinds of political power struggles that go on in any government and how hard it can be for a public leader to control military idiots like this. At times the actors' portrayals go a bit too far over the top: the grimaces and dirty looks are just too evil (or are they).
But at the end of the day it's like this: if you've heard about this crisis as we have and you want to find out what really happened, don't rely on this movie. As is said in so many words: 'we need to get the truth here'. And it doesn't matter that Jack Nicholson's character in another movie about the military bellows out: 'you can't handle the truth'. People can not only handle it - they demand it.