Author: ChadPolenz@aol.com Subject: Review: Thirteen Days (2000) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews Organization: None Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu X-Questions-to: graham@jetcity.com X-Submissions-to: graham@ee.washington.edu Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films Summary: r.a.m.r. #28085 Keywords: author=polenz
Thirteen Days a film review by Chad Polenz
WHAT IT'S ABOUT:
The Cuban Missile Crisis of the early 1960s are re-visited in this docudrama that tells the story behind the headlines, of what was going on in the JFK Whitehouse at the time (or what MAY have been going on, this is a movie after all and Hollywood has a tendency to exaggerate).
WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT IT:
The film is able to take a real-life situation and exploit it for its intensity without making it seem like a cliche, half-baked action flick. Everything shown on camera has some documented truth to it so it's kind of like being brought back to the actual situation and reliving it all. The cast is made up mostly of obscure working actors who all shine beautifully.
The entire movie is one really long intense moment, like those parts in regular thrillers where the heroes have to make a quick, crucial decision, only here it's compounded tenfold and never comes off as trite or lame.
WHAT'S NOT SO GOOD ABOUT IT:
Kevin Costner seems to have been cast simply to give the movie a name to sell to the public, which is unfortunate because he's terrible at faking accents and quite distracting here. The film also wastes time by trying to play up the sentimental angle of showing Costner's family being so distraught by the crisis. The whole country is feeling the exact same way so it's pretty much a given families might experience a lot of grief and still be brought closer together in the end.
CRITIQUE:
Movies about war have been done to death, but what makes "Thirteen Days" stand out is that it's about AVOIDING war. And not just any kind of war, nuclear war, which could have very well spelled the end of the modern world as we knew it had it happened.
I'm not a history major and I doubt much of the audience attending this film will be either, but that's okay because virtually the entire story is one big history lesson. The Cold War was a bitter, intense standoff that lasted decades between the United States and the Soviet Union but no film has really taken the time to tell a smart, detailed story of how it worked at the highest level. Here, the story is realistic, most of the characters are historical figures who likely did the things they did in this movie.
For two hours two nations have their fingers on the launch bottom, each waiting for the other to blink first. How we managed to not blink is quite amazing, and even though you already know the outcome before you even see the movie it's still fascinating and mysterious. One of the best thrillers ever made.
GRADE: A
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