Night in the lonesome October.

Rating: 7/10 (30 November 2009)

It's October of 1962, our most immemorial year. President Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood) and his staff, including Bobby Kennedy (Dylan Baker) and Kevin O'Donell (Kevin Costner), discover that the Soviet Union is building intermediate-range nuclear missiles on communist Cuba, ninety miles off our coast, destabilizing the standoff between the West and the Soviet Bloc. Once operational, the missiles put Russia on our doorstep and can't be permitted to exist. What to do? The film shows us with reasonable clarity what was done. The US couldn't just sit there and do nothing. The White House drew up plans for a strike against the missile sites. But then the Soviets could just rebuild them. Therefore, another invasion of the island was required, which would in turn provoke a Soviet response elsewhere, probably against Berlin.
One thing leads to another and pretty soon there is no more world left to argue about.
How is the problem solved? Kennedy puts Cuba under a blockade, surrounded by Navy ships. Technically, a blockade is an act of war, so we call it a "quarantine," because that word is not an act of war. Russian ships continue their approach.
Neither the US nor the USSR is able to back down without losing "honor," never mind any practical advantages. So an off-stage channel is opened up by the Soviets between their top spy in New York and the New York Times. The Russians are willing to consider a trade. They'll remove the missiles if we pledge never again to invade Cuba. (We'd done it the year before, in The Bay of Pigs fiasco.) Of course, it's not that simple. The real world seldom is. A letter arrives from Khrushchev agreeing to the deal, causing a great big sigh of relief in the White House. But the next morning a far less conciliatory letter arrives, backing out of the concessions agreed to in the first letter. Analysis reveals that the first letter was written by Khrushchev, but that the second had been polished by someone else. Has Khrushchev been deposed in a coup? Better put on the old kit bag again.
But Bobby Kennedy comes up with an idea. How about if we only respond to the first letter? Does he mean we reject the second letter? No, just that we ignore it as if it had never happened.
At a last-minute meeting with the Soviet Ambassador, Bobby Kennedy informs the Russians that we have some outdated missiles in Turkey that are scheduled for dismantling, and that, if necessary, Chairman Khrushchev can claim these as part of the deal, as long as it's never made public. That way, Khrushchev can satisfy the hard-liners in the Politburo without humiliating the United States.
The problem is solved and everyone totters back from the brink of nuclear war.
There's another, similar film, "The Missiles of October," with William DeVane as Kennedy and Martin Sheen as Bobby. It's quite good, but it's made for television and lacks the production values and special effects of this version. The TV movie is dry and logical, and it tells us more about Khrushchev, whose huevos were also in a vice. This one carries more emotional weight since we get to know about the individuals involved.
The final scenes are moving, as O'Donell stares from the window of his home the next morning, surrounded by his wife and children, bathed in the early light, and says wonderingly to himself, "The sun came up." It's not as tacky as I've made it sound.
One of the more stunning features of the movie is the analytical plane on which these round-table discussions take place. No decision is made without brainstorming and without confirmation of beliefs, when that's possible. These people were careful, delicate, surgical in their decision making. The president alludes to Sun Tzu before Sun Tzu was cool. He draws a history lesson from Barbara Tuchman's "The Guns of August," about the accidental beginnings of World War I. It's become a little more difficult to imagine such discussions in political circles today. Nobody seems to have gotten past the Cliffs Notes version of "The Prince." Too bad, too, because, as the French philosopher Henri Bergson suggested, a leader should think like a man of action and act like a man of thought. Somewhere along the line, that became "Kill 'em All and Let God Sort 'em Out!" and was printed on bumper stickers.
The performances are all adequate, with Greenwood giving a decent impression of JFK. The other character all more or less resemble their historical counterparts -- more so than in the TV version -- although the characters and the event itself have faded so much in our collective memories that it probably doesn't make much difference anymore. Dean Rusk might as well look like Yosemite Sam.
The people who probably most need to see this film are probably going to switch channels out of boredom. After all, nobody's head gets wrenched off in the second reel.