THIRTEEN DAYS
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: Essentially a remake of THE
MISSILES OF OCTOBER, THIRTEEN DAYS tells the
story of the Cuban Missile Crisis as a political
thriller. The film is polished and engaging but
not all of the stylistic decisions make sense.
The tagline "You'll never believe how close we
came" is a good indicator of the style and
message of the film. Rating: 7 (0 to 10), +2
(-4 to +4)
My view of THIRTEEN DAYS is heavily colored by my view of the Kennedy administration and its Cuban policy in general and in this incident in particular. The crisis is just about the only major Cold War incident when I feel the Soviets were in the right. It is not easy to get me to agree with Soviets I might add. At this point in history the US had already put nuclear missiles just off the borders of the Soviet. They also had complained loudly but really only complained about a branch of the US government sponsoring an invasion of Cuba. Had the tables been reversed we would have labeled the Bay of Pigs invasion "an act of war," but I suspect the Soviets were a little fearful of the implications of so doing so and quite rightly. Acts of war really require retaliation. They could not, however, ignore a second such invasion, so they needed a deterrent to prevent it from ever happening if for no other reason than to preserve the peace. It is the Americans who say, "If you want peace, prepare for war." The Soviets looked at the missiles just over the border in Turkey and saw them as setting a precedent, they would fortify Cuba. That would seem a just act. But instead of regarding it as such it led to a head to head confrontation. If you see the film you will see all the tangible steps to diffuse the situation are taken by the Soviets. This we label "Going eyeball to eyeball with the enemy and the other guy blinked." Thank goodness he did blink when we might not have. I cannot help but feel the unsung hero of THIRTEEN DAYS is Nikita Khrushchev. This is just my interpretation, I am no expert, but it colors my reaction to the film.
THIRTEEN DAYS is the story of the Cuban Missile Crisis from the point of view of Presidential advisor Kenneth O'Donnell (played by Kevin Costner). The film is pretty much just a blow-by-blow recounting of the incidents of the crisis beginning with a spy plane flying over Cuba and seeing the nuclear missiles the Soviets had provided the Cubans. The John F. Kennedy ( played here by Bruce Greenwood) is told almost immediately. He calls in his brother Robert (Steven Culp), his closest confidant. For the remainder of the crisis the President seems to have two heads, the Jack head and the Bobby head.
Anyone with a knowledge of history knows what happened next, including the strong policy split between the military and civilians in government. The Chiefs of Staff were anxious to take on the Soviets in a war they assumed they could limit. Toward the end of the crisis we realize that the Soviets also have their own divisions in policy with hawks and doves in the Politburo. The film is a constant battle between those who want military solutions and those who want diplomatic ones with John Kennedy being indecisive between them, and rightly so. Kennedy is haunted by his reading of Barbara Tuchman's THE GUNS OF AUGUST, an account of how both sides behaving in what at the time appeared logical ways inexorably descended into the First World War. That could happen again, this time with nuclear missiles.
THIRTEEN DAYS makes some bad stylistic mistakes. The film opens with a missile firing and a nuclear explosion. Then more missile firing and more big explosions. Then more of the same. The point is, of course, that this sort of exchange is what they will be trying to avoid. Frankly I started to find this frequent visual reminder of the high stakes involved rather annoying. We all agree that this is what we are trying to avoid. We all agree that nuclear weapons are very, very bad. But to think clearly we have to avoid what Kissinger called "scaring ourselves to death." Showing the bomb so often in hellish hues of red is a patronizing emotional argument thrown in among the logical arguments of the film. A number of scenes toward the beginning seem for no reason to start out in black and white and steel blue and fade into the full color spectrum. It was not all scenes and the implication may have been we are taking this from cold-hard records and breathing life into it. But I was not sure. Whatever it was trying to do it was failing. The Boston accents were a distraction particularly because actors were not consistent in the degree of their own accents. SPARTACUS was not made in Latin with English subtitles. Director Roger Donaldson could have toned them down a little and we could have lived with the inaccuracy.
On the other hand the film does produce a great feeling of immediacy without snowing the viewer in detail he does not understand. The build of tension is very good in spite of the fact we all know how it will turn out. Part of the problem with this documentary is that it has been done before and is overly familiar. There was an excellent TV docu-drama in the mid-1970s, THE MISSILES OF OCTOBER. There was also at least one good documentary made for television. Each was better than THIRTEEN DAYS.
I think films like this that show us an important event in history in minute detail are very good, but that THIRTEEN DAYS is a highly flawed example that makes it fall short of being a really great film. I rate it 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale. And I still think it picks out the wrong people to be heroes.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@avaya.com
Copyright 2001 Mark R. Leeper
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