Thirteen Days 2000

B+

When I got this movie, I did not realize it was already 10 years old. It was a movie I remember wanting to see, but never getting around to watching. Lately I’ve been watching episodes of Mad Men which happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis and I am reading a book about submarines which partly deals with the Crisis as well. So this movie fits.

Anyway, this is a good dramatization of what was going on at the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It centers around JFK’s “special assistant” Kenny O’donnell, a member of the Kennedy inner circle (but not quite so inner as the movie portrays probably). I guess it would have been too bland to center the movie on Robert Kennedy or Robert McNamara who were the ones really calling the shots, along with a fairly decent number of other aids and higher ups. The problem with movies like this is getting people who are not these very recognizable people to play them. So they have the accents and capture certain characteristics of their characters, but they just aren’t them. While Costner has free reign in playing an aide nobody has heard of, he throws on the Kennedy accent too, to terrible effect. Maybe O’donnell had that accent, but better to leave it out. Nobody would have known the difference. There was also something off about Robert McNamara’s portrayal. Maybe the actor was too young.

The story itself is a good one though. The Kennedy administration isn’t too far removed from the Bay of Pigs and is still struggling to legitimize itself. They are mistrustful of the military establishment and with good reason. And they are being severely tested by the Russians who are moving nuclear weapons to Cuba, putting most of the country 5 minutes away from destruction. We know it turns out okay, but there were close calls and the movie does a good job of showing the treacherous path that Kennedy was able to walk. It is like an episode of the West Wing, only not as well written since these are actual people.

For those reasons it is worth watching. I think it could have been better if they had made it very authentic but had chosen very solid actors rather than actors that looked like the people they portray. Skip the accents entirely and just treat it like these are different people entirely, doing exactly the same things. Maybe nobody would buy that. I enjoyed it the movie, but it does have flaws, so I will give it a B+.

Written: 24 Jul 2010