# Thirteen Days (2000)

### reviewed by
Scott Renshaw

THIRTEEN DAYS (New Line) Starring: Kevin Costner, Bruce Greenwood, Stephen Culp, Dylan Baker. Screenplay: David Self, based on "The Kennedy Tapes - Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis" by Ernest R. May and Philip D Zelikow. Producers: Kevin Costner, Kevin O'Donnell, Peter O. Almond and Armyan Bernstein. Director: Roger Donaldson. MPAA Rating: PG-13 (profanity, adult themes) Running Time: 138 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.

In an early scene in THIRTEEN DAYS, Kenny O' Donnell (Kevin Costner) sits at the breakfast table with his wife and children. It is October 1962, and O'Donnell is a special advisor to President John F. Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood). As the conversation turns to field trips and report cards, alarm bells begin going off. Not literal alarm bells for some civil defense drill -- metaphorical, artistic alarm bells for viewers with a sense of deja vu. This is a film about the Cuban Missile Crisis, but here we are with a crew-cut Costner in his domestic glory. Will THIRTEEN DAYS, like JFK before it, make the mistake of looking at a pivotal moment in American history and asking, "How did it affect Kevin Costner's fictional family?"

Then, for most of the film, something wonderful happens: We see no one but men in suits, trying to solve a seemingly unsolvable problem. As tautly directed by Roger Donaldson, THIRTEEN DAYS finds riveting drama in passionate debate, tricky politics and impossible decisions -- at least until the O'Donnell kin start turning up again. Most of the narrative is spent in the war rooms and strategy sessions that find JFK and his key advisors -- O'Donnell, his brother and Attorney General Bobby (Steven Culp), Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (Dylan Baker) -- trying to determine the appropriate course of action after spy planes identify Soviet nuclear missile sites under construction in Cuba, just a couple of weeks away from being functional. Do nothing, and doomsday is a five minutes flight from half of America. Try diplomacy, and the sites become operational while offers and counter-offers take place. Sneak in to attack the sites, and the Soviets retaliate in Europe, setting off a likely World War III.

THIRTEEN DAYS is a history-based thriller that faces a variation on the knuckle-headed joke promulgated by the anti-TITANIC contingent: In this case, we know the boat (or the human race) _doesn't_ sink. But THIRTEEN DAYS isn't about whether or not the world will be bombed to cinders; it's about the astonishing real-life war game played by capable but flawed people for the fate of civilization. For a film that is devoted largely to debate and description of scenarios, THIRTEEN DAY is incredibly tense. We watch politicians go toe-to-toe with soldiers over the appropriate philosophical footing for dealing with the Red Menace. We watch brinksmanship played like two kids shoving each other on a schoolyard. It's the kind of smart film-making of ideas that can keep you on the edge of your seat waiting for a phone to ring, or not to ring.

Mostly, however, it's a profile in the courage under fire of John F. Kennedy. Plenty of films have opted either to canonize JFK as our great slain king or demonize him as a womanizing rich kid, but I don't think any film has ever made him as compelling a dramatic character. As played with a piercing intellect by Bruce Greenwood, Kennedy is portrayed as an often short-tempered man with burdens to bear (the subtle acknowledgement of his chronic back pain is one of many effective shorthands in David Self's script). He's also the essence of a great leader, bringing the finest minds together, considering the greatest possible good and finally trusting his own reason and judgment. Greenwood's dynamic performance finds JFK's legacy not in some legend of golden boy heroism, but in the idea that he carried out his responsibilities with character.

All is exceedingly well in THIRTEEN DAYS until the story begins drifting back to O'Donnell fretting over his loved ones. Costner is a much-maligned dramatic actor, and he doesn't do himself favors here with a honking Boston accent that's borderline absurd next to the subtler intonations of Greenwood and Culp (as scary a dead ringer for RFK as you could imagine). When one scene after another in the final half hour of THIRTEEN DAYS finds Costner staring pensively at one of his children, sharing a quiet moment with his wife or rubbing his tightly-closed eyes, it becomes too easy to lose focus on the big picture for some misguided sense of "humanizing" the story. There are plenty of dramatically fascinating humans in THIRTEEN DAYS without ever leaving the closed conference rooms of the White House and the Pentagon. Policy can make surprisingly intense cinema, without a breakfast table or report card in sight.

         On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 hits and missiles:  8.

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