Thirteen Days
Thirteen Days (2000)
"If the sun comes up tomorrow, it is only because of men of goodwill. And that's - that's all there is between us and the devil."
The way the story plays out in this film is like a dramatization you might see on a Discovery Channel show. It's told mostly through the eyes of Kenny O'Donnell (Costner), the Special Assistant to the President and one of Kennedy's best friends from his Harvard days. One of the biggest hurdles for a film like this is making the subject matter interesting. I mean, most audiences don't want to watch 2 and a half hours of a bunch of people sitting and talking in a conference room. So director Roger Donaldson uses a few tricks to try and make all the political wheelings and dealings a bit more palatable to the average audience. The first thing I noticed, as someone who isn't terribly familiar with the American political landscape of the early 60s, was subtitles identifying the major players. Hence, the audience is aware of who these people are and what they do. Secondly, Donaldson makes liberal use of actual newsreel footage from the time depicting the U.S.'s military build-up in preparation for what could have been World War III. Finally, the film mixes in a few scenes military surveillance runs over Cuba to break up all the talking. For the most part, I find it worked out pretty well.
The story is interesting in terms of how it portrays the politics of the day. Many films like this would lean heavily into pro-America imagery, but Thirteen Days veers away from this and instead focuses on the turmoil within the Whitehouse during that era. It's clear that most of the Joint Chiefs don't respect Kennedy and are pulling their own strings behind the scenes to orchestrate a war. I'm not familiar enough with the event to know whether that was true or not, but, given the current state of American politics, I can totally believe that would happen. While I'm sure there were some creative liberties with the story, I found it a bit of an eye-opener into the mind of a world leader in the middle of the crisis. The whole film really is about the almost unwinnable situation Kennedy was thrust into. He couldn't ignore the missiles because that would represent a major threat to the U.S. At the same time, he couldn't just bomb Cuba back to the stone age because the Soviets would most certainly respond in kind, which would lead to nuclear war. I think many people who weren't alive for the crisis don't really understand how close we came to utter annihilation. It really is an interesting look into an event that shaped the Cold War for the next two decades.
Acting/Characters:
The acting in the film is a bit of a mixed bag, and its starts with Kevin Costner. Really, I think that Costner is a good actor overall; it's just that he is often miscast in certain roles, particularly ones that require him to do an accent other than his own. In this film, Costner must put on a heavy New England accent and, unfortunately, it isn't very good. I've heard from many actors and voice coaches that a New England accent is one of the toughest to get right, and normally, I'm not too picky about iffy accents in films, but, man, does Costner drop the ball with it. This is really a shame because I think Costner actually did a good job in his portrayal of O'Donnell apart from the accent. I don't know, I've never heard the real Ken O'Donnell speak, and maybe that's what he really sounds like, but to me, Costner just made the accent sound almost like a cartoon character. Shame.
Costner was the only big name in the cast, with the rest of the roles played by career character actors. The most prominent of which is Bruce Greenwood as JFK. I quite like Greenwood as an actor, and I think his portrayal of Kennedy was pretty good. However, Greenwood decided not to try and do an impression of Kennedy, which was a good call because JFK had a much higher-pitched voice than Greenwood. Instead, Greenwood adopts a New England accent (which is also a bit iffy) and just speaks with his own voice. Good job.
The rest of the cast is solid. Notables are Steven Culp playing U.S. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, Dylan Baker as Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara and Michael Fairman as U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Adlai Stevenson. Overall, the supporting cast does a solid, if not spectacular, job.
Visual/Special Effects:
There's not a ton of special effect in the film, save for a few aerial shots of some ere-specific U.S. military aircraft. However, the film has one visual quirk, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Donaldson made the decision to sift occasionally from color to black and white film. So the film starts in black and white and then gradually shifts to color, which helped me get into the era that the film was set in. If he had left it at that, I would've been fine with it. However, on occasion following a cut, the film would briefly shift back into black and white for what seemed to be no apparent reason (from a story perspective, at least). While it wasn't terribly distracting or anything, it just didn't make much sense and didn't really need to be in there.
Score/Music:
The music was composed by Trevor Jones, and, normally, I like his stuff. However, in Thirteen Days, the score seems kind of generic and unremarkable. As I sit here typing, I'm straining to remember any bits of it, and I'm drawing a blank. It did detract from the film, but it certainly didn't add to it either.
Action:
Being a politically focused film, you wouldn't think there'd be much action in the movie, but there are actually a few exciting scenes. While not strictly action, there is a sequence in the middle of the film that follows a pair of Navy pilots flying a low-level reconnaissance flight over Cuba to get some clearer shots of the nuclear weapons. As I mentioned above, it was a great way to break up some of the more dialogue-heavy parts of the film.
Final Verdict:
I'm stumped as to what to think of this film. On the one hand, I enjoyed the insight it gives to a major event in history. On the other hand, some odd directorial quirks and some uneven acting irritated me a bit. The real question is, was I entertained by the film? The answer is, yes, I was. But I think I was more entertained like I would be with a good documentary and not like I would be with a good piece of cinema. If you're a history buff with a particular interest in the Cold War, then check it out. Otherwise, it's probably safe to skip this one.
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