Action-packed, exciting. Now, if only it were true.

Rating: 8/10 (7 August 2001)

Nice job by Costner, understated in performance, probably because he didn't direct. But I don't really want to review the movie, which is good; rather I'd like to correct the history.
The actual destroyer USS Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. (DD-850), which intercepted the Russian freighter Marucla during the blockade, was towed out of the naval museum in Fall River, Mass and put to sea under tow for this movie. Two different numbers were painted on her hull, port and starboard, so she could represent two different destroyers in the blockade for the film, and the DASH helicopter deck and ASROC were disguised because they were a post-1962 FRAM MK II conversion. I'm pretty involved with her, as an ex-crewman: I was the CIC and Intelligence officer from 1965-67. During my tour, there were still plenty of old salts around who had been on board during the blockade, and they told a different story than the world knows and the movie tells.
Their story is that the JP Kennedy was nowhere near Cuba when the blockade was instituted, but rather off Bermuda (1000 nautical miles, more or less); and as the freighters bearing missiles approached the island, the rest of the Navy was ordered to stand down so the JP Kennedy, namesake of the President's brother, could steam toward the island at emergency flank speed using the "war sprayer plates" for the boilers, always kept in the Captain's safe, and be there for the photo op of making the first interception.

At least the movie properly lays the blame for the chaos of two messages from Krushchev squarely on JFK and RFK's stupid idea of leaking the Turkey missile exchange gambit to a sympathetic press. And lest we forget, Sen. Kenneth Keating (R-NY) had been screaming about missiles in Cuba the previous December, but it was hotly denied by the White House until weeks before a mid-term election the party in power was widely expected to lose. Never switch horses during a crisis, they say...Indeed, the world little knew how close it came to catastrophe to satisfy JFK's political ambitions.