DVD Review: Thirteen Days

Starring: Kevin Costner, Bruce Greenwood, Stephen Culp
Director: Roger Donaldson
In a few words...: Gripping account of the Cuban Missile Crisis as viewed through the eyes of White House staffer Kenny O'Donnell
 
Rating: 7.5/10

Beware: SPOILERS AHEAD

This is one of those films that I was sure I'd hate, yet it's become one of my favourites. At the time this Kevin Costner political epic was out in cinemas, I was in high school, engrossed in Modern History - by far and away my favourite subject - and we happened to be studying, at that time, the Cuban Missile Crisis, which, of course, is the story told in Thirteen Days. So Mrs Fields, our awesome MH teacher, took as all out to Liverpool Westfields to watch it - a pretty big trip for our high school selves. Back then, I was exclusively into war and action films where the explosions and witty one-liners were coming at me fast and furious. I was dreading watching Thirteen Days, simply because it was set almost entirely in the White House.

Boy, was I wrong. This was - and remains - a brilliant film, and, (at least in my humble opinion), Costner's best work, right up there equal and alongside his performance as District Attorney Jim Garrison in Oliver Stone's powerful JFK. The irony is that as Costner, as O'Donnell, spends the film advising President John F. Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood, in an astonishingly charismatic turn). Tragically, just over a year later, the man known as JFK will be dead, assassinated in Dallas, and the Warren Commission will be formed to investigate...and will later be challenged by an ambitious DA called Jim Garrison.

Yet, the events on the Grassy Knoll in Dallas are a long way off. Kennedy, here, has a major problem to contend with when nuclear warheads are detected on Cuban soil, well within range of mainland America. It is a defining moment in a Cold War that appeared, at that moment, to be getting hot. He, O'Donnell and his brother, Robert  F. Kennedy (Stephen Cup, who is only just outshone by Greenwood) must guide the country through dangerous times, back from the brink of war. 

Thirteen Days is a frightening film simply because it shows how close America came to a possible nuclear war. You feel the pressure mounting on Kennedy, whose military advisors, led by General Curtis LeMay (Kevin Conway) whose nickname, Bombs Away, was rather apt, want to bomb Cuba and the missiles, and whose political staffers, particularly Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (Dylan Baker) and Secretary of State Dean Rusk (Henry Strozier), want to settle things peacefully. America, under Kennedy, went right to the brink, and for a few hours came close to falling over.

Much has been written about O'Donnell, and Costner's portrayal has the staffer right in the thick of the action, even though this may not have been quite so in real life. In fact, a lot of what O'Donnell does in the film could rightly be attributed to Special Counsel Ted Sorensen.

For his part, McNamara weighed in during a PBS interview: "For God's sakes, Kenny O'Donnell didn't have any role whatsoever in the missile crisis; he was a political appointment secretary to the President; that's absurd. It was not Kenny O'Donnell who pulled us all together—it was Ted Sorensen."

Be that as it may, O'Donnell is the lightning rod in Thirteen Days, and much of the events are seen through his eyes. It's an interesting angle, too. You watch Kennedy wading deep into the fight of his presidency, and O'Donnell is there as well. One memorable scene has him talking to a spy plane pilot about to do a run over the missile sites. O'Donnell warns the pilot that the Joint Chiefs would be looking for any excuse to take serious military action. A US plane peppered by enemy guns would constitute a situation where President Kennedy would have no choice, and would have to bow to the pressure and take military action, obviously a catastrophic course of action.  It's tense. You're right there, the administration jolted from one problem to the next, war getting closer and closer.

From a heated session at the United Nations, where aging but wily Adlai Stevenson (Michael Fairman) steals the show, to tense moments in the War Room, where Rusk remarks that "We're eyeball to eyeball and I think the other fellow just blinked," as Soviet ships heading to Cuba, and threatening to break through a US quarantine zone, Thirteen Days rushes along at a frenetic pace, as the USSR and the USA come closer and closer to war until backroom communication - a Soviet "emissary" contacts an ABC News report with a message from Soviet President Nikita Khrushchev - partly through Robert Kennedy, saves the day. Kennedy secretly agrees to remove Jupiter missiles from Italy and Turkey in exchange for Khrushchev removing all missiles from Cuba.

Leaving the theatre at the conclusion of the movie, I realised that I had been more riveted by the way the crisis unfolded from inside the walls of the White House than in some of the all-action films I'd watched around that same time. This film was part of what got me interested in reading Tom Clancy, whose novels spend a lot of time dealing with decisions made by people in political power, and the real-world consequences around them.

Thirteen Days needs little in the way of help with the plot. It tells a fascinating story, and gives us a glimpse into the sorts of events that were taking place in the upper echelons of command. A scene where O'Donnell visits his son's soccer game during the midst of the crisis highlights that very few Americans had any real idea of how close they might have come to war. Life went on, kids were still playing soccer in suburban parks. Yet, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a select group of men and women were trying to avoid potentially the most destructive war the world has ever known. And, barely, they did. They were extraordinary times.

If you're after a gripping film that happens to chart the course of a very interesting time in history, try Thirteen Days. You won't be disappointed.