Decent political drama.

Rating: 7/10 (23 May 2017)

This was one of the less sensationalized historical movies I've seen, though it surely took some liberties in the pacing of the escalation of the Cuban Missile Crisis and some of the political debates that took place. That said, the movie did an impressive job at keeping the level of drama at a palatably high level while having the majority of scenes involve nothing more than actors debating in a room. This is good because it gives a better sense of how the actual events played out and is a testament to how diplomacy rather than military engagement won the day in this period of tension. On the downside, it will not be easy for those who are not familiar with the Cuban Missile Crisis and Cold War tensions in general to understand. It has the feel of an action movie, but since it's the Cold War there are not any actual battles to depict, although there are a couple scenes of reconnaissance and military suspense.
I do not agree with the choice to make Kenny O'Donnell the protagonist. He contributes very little to the decisions being made, and is little more than another strident voice in Kennedy's ear. The story is all about weighing the odds and deciding the best course of action, so it does not make sense for the main character to not be a part of that. The logical choice for the movie's hero would have been JFK seeing as he was the leader who said yes or no to every proposed course of action, although this may have been problematic since he's almost portrayed as perfect like the fictional presidents in Roland Emmerich's movies. JFK does deserve a great deal of credit for avoiding catastrophe under great pressure from many sides, but I think they were a little too generous to him here. The one who I thought should have been given the most attention is Bobby Kennedy. He doesn't have the same power as his brother, but he is the one who strikes the pivotal deal with Russia, and I think that moment in the movie was downplayed because Bobby wasn't made to be important enough. All of the actors overact a bit in their parts, and the fake Boston accents are pretty bad, particularly Kevin Costner's atrocious inconsistency in diction.
The actual suspense factor for the audience is greatly lessened by the fact that this is historical; we know by virtue of the fact that we are sitting and watching the movie that nuclear war did not ensue. However, each scene does a good job of the "how" overcoming the "if" as the dramatic question of every given complication. It's not about "will nuclear war be avoided?", it's about "how can nuclear war be avoided?". This makes it a good lesson for how to prevent similar tragedies in today's world. A historical movie about nuclear war actually ensuing would make exponentially more money than Thirteen Days made, but it would lack the resilience of the human spirit that is on display here.
In terms of the actual events, I see nothing blatantly inaccurate, but there was probably some manipulation of the time line of when everything happened. By this, I do not mean that events were shown out of order, that wouldn't make sense. Some of the more personal moments with Kenny and his family like when he gets called back to the White House five minutes after getting home and when he goes to his son's football game were probably contrived. This isn't really a problem or a bad choice by the writers, but I thought those scenes detracted from the overall movie. I think the writers did a good job making sure the characters addressed all sides of the very complex implications of the characters' actions. Whenever a decision had to be made, they had to factor in whether the press knew, how the military felt about it, how it made Kennedy look, how Russia and Cuba would respond, and whether it would weaken the US's diplomatic position. The periodic use of black and white seems to be done to imply that the movie is really historically accurate, but I don't think it worked well. Sometimes black and white scenes work like in Casino Royale or Memento, but here it just looked weird visually and was distracting.
I would recommend this if you are willing to pay attention to dialogue and can follow a somewhat complicated plot pretty well. It's not a war movie and there is no real action, but if you like war movies this may appeal to you. If you just want to know more about the Cuban Missile Crisis, it's probably not a bad place to go if you don't want to do any hard core research. I would recommend not watching it in one sitting because it's pretty long and you may want to backtrack a couple times just to remember the exact situation. The pace is pretty good, but not enough that it will keep your attention for a straight 145 minutes. It's not a great work of cinema, but it's made with care and should engage you at least a little. Overall Rating: 7.5/10.