Thirteen Days (PG-13, 2000)

THIRTEEN DAYS chronicles the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when American planes took photos of Soviet missiles in Cuba. President John F. Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood) had endured the botched attempt at the Bay of Pigs to overthrow Castro the previous year. This drama doesn't waste time on introductions or exposition, giving the story a sense of immediacy and urgency. Advisors like Dean Acheson and the military urge JFK to bomb the sites. But Adlai Stevenson says, "One of us in the room should be a coward," and he asks the President to come up with a diplomatic solution. Kennedy knows better than to fight the last war, but he is not sure how to fight the next one. The President and his advisors argue about what to do ("Bombing them sure would feel good!"), interrupted by "just as usual" events to avoid letting the press or the Soviets suspect that anything was going on. When President Kennedy tells Chicago Mayor Daley that he "wouldn't miss this event for the world," we appreciate the literal meaning of his words.

Thirteen Days may seem like a movie script, but it really happened. This gripping film will leave audiences reminding themselves that we are still here, and for once, the tag line has it just right: "You'll never know how close we came."

Producer Kevin Costner plays a real person, Kennedy staffer Kenny O'Donnell, but the character combines the roles and actions of several people and essentially exists to help tell the story as efficiently as possible. Most of the time, he blends in with a large, capable cast of character actors (though he seems to make himself too important in a pep talk scene and at the end there is a sort of "Three Musketeers" shot that seems inappropriate).

Studio: New Line
Director: Roger Donaldson
Cast: Drake Cook, Jon Foster, Kevin Costner
Genre: Drama
Run time: 145 minutes
Theatrical release: December 25, 2000
DVD release: July 10, 2001
MPAA Rating: PG-13
MPAA explanation: brief strong language