It's Good

Rating: 7/10 (17 October 2018)

Having an interest in this period of time I was excited to learn about Thirteen Days. Indeed, I had never heard of it before and seeing the cast I have to say that I was a little surprised. However, now having seen it, I'm glad I stumbled across this film. While it's not amazing it is certainly very well made and represents the graveness of the situation brilliantly.
The most impressive thing was how reasonably Donaldson handled showing the Cuban missile crisis and the US politics surrounding it. I think that it would be rather easy to let things get completely out of hand and thus the movie would end being mostly a mess. Either you make it action oriented or focus completely on politics. Donaldson did the latter and made it work. While most of the movie is people sitting in rooms talking - as one can imagine - there are also small action sequences sprinkled in which add some excitement, keeping the film always flowing. Perhaps it was thanks to the rather excellent cast or the great writing but the talking never gets boring. In fact, I wouldn't have minded seeing more of it.
Now, having said what I said in the last paragraph one might imagine me giving Thirteen Days a higher rating. This brings me to my biggest flaw in the film. There is just something unexplainable missing. I can't figure out what it is but I just felt like there was always something missing. Had it not been for that, I think that this could easily be one of the best political movies out there. There are no flaws and everything that this film does, it does very well. I just felt like I was wanting something more for almost the entire runtime.
Thirteen Days is definitely a good film and if you are interested in the Cold War or how Kennedy and co handled it, I would highly recommend seeing it. However, I feel that everyone else might be left somewhat bored and wanting for more. Perhaps that is what I was missing. This film is as political as it gets and maybe I just wanted it to be a bit more. With that being said, I enjoyed it and certainly learned some things.