Quick decisions at the end of the world

Rating: 7/10 (4 December 2001)

Do you have any idea how close the United States was to nuclear war? Watch Thirteen Days, and you'll get a better idea. Thirteen Days is the story of how the Kennedy brothers avoided war and created enemies during the Cuban missile crisis. While the entire U.S. military -- and most of President Kennedy's staff -- wanted the United States to strike Cuba and enter into war with Russia, President Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Kenny O'Donnell, their political advisor, decided to wait. It is a chilling two and a half hours of drama, showing that tense dialogue -- not special effects -- are really the way to make an audience squirm. Perhaps the most tense moment of the film is when the United States starts a blockade, preparing to search all Russian ships that are heading toward Cuba. Without live television feeds, satellite imagery, or even direct contact with the American ships, the President and his Chiefs of Staff have to sit around and wait to hear what happens. It was chilling.
Although the storyline is magnificent, the acting leaves something to be desired. Kevin Costner, as O'Donnell, has what is probably the most horrendous Boston accent since Rob Morrow in Last Dance. it is silly, it is ridiculous, and it takes all your focus away from what he's actually saying. Sometimes, the accent sounds like a bizarre hybrid between Bostonian and southern. The only explanation I could come up with was that maybe Costner still thought he was in JFK. Or wished he was. Bruce Greenwood as President John Kennedy also suffers from a less-than-par Boston accent. But what is worse, he captures very little of the Kennedy mystique. He seems too old, too straight-laced, to play the free-wheeling president that changed everyone's perceptions of the White House. More Ronald Reagan than Jack Kennedy, Greenwood seemed not worth all the hype that was surrounding his performance. Almost making up for both these poor performances is Steven Culp as Bobby Kennedy. Perhaps benefitting from previous practice (he played Bobby in 1996's Norma Jean and Marilyn), Culp is absolutely perfect as the attorney general, from the Boston accent right down to the floppy hair. He had the charisma, the looks, and even the brazen, mildly obnoxious personality right down to a T. Thirteen Days, which glides through two hours and fifteen minutes effortlessly, unfortunately runs out of steam right at the end. It's almost as if the writers and directors can't explain how we survived this ordeal. Maybe that's the problem. Perhaps Thirteen Days suffers most from a storyline that is, at its heart, still too scary, too unfathomable, for us to fully express.