gripping historical drama

Rating: Null/10 (5 January 2002)

In just the past few months - since the United States has once again been put on a state of high alert after the September 11th terrorist attacks - `Thirteen Days' has assumed a position of much greater pertinence than it did when it was first released in theatres in late 2000. What at that time might have seemed like little more than a quaint history lesson - dealing with issues and events from a bygone world and era - now suddenly throbs with a contemporary relevance it didn't have before.
`Thirteen Days' derives its title from the two-week period in October 1962 when, during the famed Cuban Missile Crisis, the world was brought almost to the brink of nuclear annihilation. In this Halloween horror to end all Halloween horrors, the citizens of the planet held their collective breaths as President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev faced off over the Soviets' attempt to employ nuclear weapons, aimed directly at the United States, in Castro's Cuba.
The most admirable aspect of `Thirteen Days' is that the filmmakers understand the power of their material and feel no need to hype or gussy it up with irrelevant side issues or cheap melodramatics. For 147 minutes, we are thrust into the center of this volatile moment in time as President Kennedy, his Attorney General (and brother) Robert Kennedy, and Special Assistant to the President Kenneth P. O'Donnell - who serves as the Everyman focal point for the audience - weigh what options they have in trying to avoid the hitherto unthinkable possibility of global, all-out nuclear war. Complicating their decisions are many of the contending forces in their own ranks - be it Congress, the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the media - all of which have a particular point to make, job to do, or political ax to grind. The film is fascinating just on the level of allowing us to see the complex and often ugly nuts-and-bolts aspect of high governmental drama. Yet, although the film never wavers from the issue at hand, it manages to achieve remarkable depth of character as we see these three men of goodwill struggling with an issue of unprecedented life-or-death global importance. We come to see the toll such stress brings to bear even on men who, in our tendency to romanticize our heroes, often seem superhuman from our outside-looking-in perspective.
Despite the fact that the movie rarely leaves its Washington setting, we are still afforded chilling images of life on the outside during these two amazing weeks: anchorman Walter Cronkite intoning a bleak sign-off to his broadcast during one of the gloomiest hours of the crisis, hordes of somber Catholics queuing up outside a church where round-the-clock confessions have been instituted, and masses of people depleting grocery store shelves in preparation for the worst-possible-case scenario.
Kevin Kostner as O'Donnell, Bruce Greenwood as JFK and Steven Culp as RFK all deliver superlative portraits of serious minded and compassionate adults who comprehend the gravity of the situation in which they find themselves.

What is most amazing about `Thirteen Hours' is that, even though we already know how it is going to end, we still find ourselves caught up in the tension and suspense of the situation. Particularly gripping is the scene in which Adlai Stevenson, then U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., confronts head-on the Soviet ambassador who attempts to deny the truth of the allegations made against his country. It is a moment of high political and emotional conflict worthy of Greek or Shakespearean drama.
One wishes that the makers of `Pearl Harbor' had taken the same approach to their historical event as the makers of `Thirteen Days' did to theirs. Then we might have been spared the inane, puppy-love scenario that all but sank that later film. Imagine if the focus in `Thirteen Days' had been on John having to break the news to Marilyn while a jealous, rheumy-eyed Bobby looked on from the wings. Thank God saner heads prevailed and we have a film on this subject that serves both as a fascinating lesson in history AND as a gripping study of human behavior in a time of crisis. Given what the world is going through right now, `Thirteen Days' emerges as a film deeply relevant to our time.