"We were eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fella just blinked"

Rating: 8/10 (24 May 2009)

It's taken the human race millions of years to get where it is today, but all that could be taken away from us in just days, even hours. The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 escalated, climaxed and then reached its resolution so rapidly that the Doomsday Clock didn't even have time to adjust its setting, but, nonetheless, it is perhaps the closest we've ever been to destroying ourselves for good. Prior to watching Roger Donaldson's taut historical thriller 'Thirteen Days (2000),' I knew very little detail about the Cuban Missile Crisis, but was familiar with its effects on popular culture. Two years afterwards, Sidney Lumet and Stanley Kubrick independently released two similar Cold War thrillers – 'Fail-Safe (1964)' and the satirical 'Dr. Strangelove (1964),' respectively – both of which clearly attempted to reproduce the mortal political situation in which young President John F. Kennedy then found himself (and both films proposed that next time we may not be so lucky).
'Thirteen Days' gives life to events that would otherwise, to a belated onlooker like myself, have seemed mere historical footnotes on paper. Only by returning to the proper time and place can one truly appreciate the despair and uncertainty faced, not only by the political leaders holding eleventh-hour meetings in the White House, but also the stunned citizens who would stock up on supplies in preparation for what must have seemed the inevitable. A historical drama like 'All the President's Men (1976)' is magnificent precisely because it succeeds in spite of a foregone conclusion, and 'Thirteen Days' similarly keeps the atmosphere exhilaratingly tense. Most of the film's action unfolds in the stuffy board-rooms and elaborately-decorated rooms of the White House, and this is where it should have stayed. Unfortunately, Donaldson too regularly cuts away from the primary decision-makers to visit American jet pilots, navy boat captains, and even the Cuban missile-workers, thus only partly representing the Presidents' continual frustration at having so little information on which to base his decisions.
The story itself revolves around Special Assistant to the President Kenny O'Donnell (played by Kevin Costner with a dubious Bostonian accent), and so presenting the Crisis from the perspective of a reasonably passive, impartial spectator. Bruce Greenwood (most recently spotted in the Bob Dylan biopic 'I'm Not There (2007)') is excellent as JFK, whose (relative) youthfulness is consistently scorned by the reactionary military commanders who seem intent on undermining his authority. Steven Culp, who has a little Brad Dourif about him, is also outstanding as Robert F. Kennedy, without whose matter-of-fact input his brother could never arguably have got along. Unjustly neglected on its original release, 'Thirteen Days' is a fascinating, and often terrifying, historical account of the Cold War's most dangerous fortnight of hostilities – hostilities not necessarily characterised by gunfire or missile strikes, but by the threat of something so much more widespread and devastating. In making his strategic decisions, President Kennedy walked a tightrope above the threat of nuclear war, and we can only be thankful that he kept his balance.