When statesmen were statesmen

Rating: 7/10 (22 August 2006)

Considering that the Cuban missile crisis has already been pretty picked over dramatically (there was also a good early TV-movie, "The Missiles of October"), and that the movie is mostly talking heads, this docudrama manages to whip up quite a lot of nail-biting tension in its two and a half hours. Its prime pleasure is seeing '60s icons humanized: JFK, RFK, Adlai Stevenson, and even Dean Rusk are presented as smart, responsible, thoughtful men who must agonize over the veracity of the information they're being confronted with and struggling to come up with a suitable response. (Today's neocon bunch undoubtedly would have escalated to full war in a heartbeat, and we probably wouldn't be here.) They lose their tempers, they despair, they disagree, but they're genuine statesmen, and colossuses compared to what politicians have become. As are the media: Walter Cronkite, in actual footage, shows a class and dignity unknown on today's airwaves or Web pages. Costner has been criticized for his faux-Boston accent, but I found it true enough, and anyway, many of his best moments are silent: He does a lot of acting with his eyes. It actually helps that Bruce Greenwood doesn't look much like JFK: It helps viewers concentrate on the man rather than the icon. I suppose the dramatization is a bit sanctimonious: The script is unambiguously on the side of religion and "traditional family values," and Roger Donaldson keeps inserting footage of nuclear explosions, as if we couldn't remember what all the fuss is about. But it's a handsome and stirring account of crafty, wise political diplomacy, the likes of which we may not again see in our lifetimes.