What happened?
Thirteen Days keeps the suspense going
Gary Susman
To appreciate Thirteen Days, the latest retelling of
the Cuban missile crisis, perhaps it helps to be, like me, too young to
remember the real thing. Those old enough to recall that
1962 event may find the film does little justice to either the dread of
imminent nuclear apocalypse they felt during the duck-and-cover era or the
shiny image they had of Camelot's Kennedys -- both unrecoverable now. But if
you have no investment in the paranoia of the Cold War or the Kennedy mythos,
you may find Roger Donaldson's film a suspenseful thriller, as well as an
object lesson in politics, crisis management, and spin control.
Like Apollo 13, another real-life tale of narrowly averted disaster from
the recent past, Thirteen Days is rich in suspense, given that we know
it all turned out okay in the end. The movie breaks the big crisis down into a
seemingly endless series of smaller ones; the headlong pacing doesn't let the
president and his advisers breathe easy for a moment. It's still a movie about
a bunch of furrow-browed white guys in suits sitting around tables -- only the
occasional display of expensive vintage jets and destroyers makes Thirteen
Days seem more like a Hollywood action film than the made-for-Turner TV
docudrama it essentially is -- yet all that talk retains power and freshness,
maybe because screenwriter David Self distilled it from recently transcribed
tapes from the Kennedy White House.
The emphasis on talk results in a portrayal of the crisis as a political rather
than a military event. John F. Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood) and Robert F. Kennedy
(Steven Culp) find themselves contending with not only the Soviets, who've
brought the nuclear threat to America's doorstep by placing missiles in Cuba,
but also with the US military chiefs, who are (according to the film) itching
to finish the Bay-of-Pigs-aborted job of destroying Fidel Castro, regardless of
the consequences. (One fanciful but eerie sequence has the White House urging a
pilot, who's played by JFK nephew Christopher Lawford, to lie to his superiors
about being hit by Cuban fire, lest they retaliate.) JFK must also face down
the press, his party bosses, the United Nations, and, of course, the American
people.
The story unfolds not through the eyes of John F. Kennedy but through those of
White House aide Kenny O'Donnell (Kevin Costner). That Costner is starring in
another paean to JFK may make Thirteen Days seem like a misguided vanity
project, but actually it's helpful to have the Kennedys at a distance, to see
them through the eyes of someone who knew them, rather than through the
iconography we've been inundated with over the years or the tarnishing of those
icons through the family's scandals and tragedies.
To O'Donnell, a Boston-bred Irish Catholic and a Harvard classmate of RFK's,
the president and the attorney-general are his two closest friends from the
neighborhood. Any observer of Massachusetts's clannish politics will appreciate
where O'Donnell is coming from when he screams at a fickle courier that
politics is all about loyalty. It's his loyalty to his two old pals that guides
his cajoling, his advice, and his defense of them against everyone else.
Costner grows ever more calcified as an actor, but it's fun to see him angry
and desperate, in a way he seldom has been since the last time director Roger
Donaldson sent him careering through Washington (in No Way Out). Still,
the standout is Greenwood's JFK. He doesn't look much like the president, and
neither does he make much of an attempt (as Costner foolishly does) at the
accent, but he conveys a quick mind, a combative will, a ready wit, and the
charisma to prod others to do their best work for him. If his Kennedy didn't
exist, Aaron Sorkin would have had to invent him. Thirteen Days may not
be entirely accurate (a scene where future Vietnam hawk Robert McNamara stands
up to a bellicose admiral rings especially false), but these days, we could do
worse than a movie that gives us a president who inspires confidence and merits
loyalty.
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