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| Electrifying poster for Roger Donaldson's Thirteen Days |
Thirteen Days is Australian director Roger Donaldson's (Cocktail (1988)) historic thriller drama about the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
In case you don't know history well, that crisis was about the Soviet Union deploying nuclear missiles on Cuba, which was very close to starting World War III, had it not been for the calm reasoning and exhaustion of every possible alternative by the U.S. administration under John F. Kennedy, while his military generals were hot for war.
The movie focuses completely on the American side, perhaps because we really don't know what happened in the Soviet offices of Khruschchev's Soviet Government. So what we see is the Americans dealing with the crisis, which is well-documented and therefore historically accurate.
Thirteen Days instead choses to take its fictional license with its lead character Kenny O'Donnell. Kevin Costner (Dances With Wolves (1990)) plays this special assistant to the President, who is a historical figure, but who didn't play the part during the actual crisis that he does in the film, where he is a key person who pep-talks, motivates and puts things in perspective for the Kennedy brothers and seems a total equal to them. Costner is mostly good in the film, which he also was a producer on, but Thirteen Days becomes long somewhere well into its 145 minutes playtime, and it is Costner-scenes that could have been cut, especially the scenes with him and his family, in which we are obviously supposed to feel that he and they are the emotional anchor of the film, which doesn't work, and we perhaps don't even need. It is a shame to say it, but Costner is the main component, who is in the way of 'his own' film.
It detracts only mildly, though, because Thirteen Days portrays such an incredible historical event that most audiences, and especially us who are historically interested, will sit on tenterhooks almost throughout the film, regardless that we know the outcome. And thank God that reason and self control and peace prevailed in those fateful offices in '62!
Bruce Greenwood (Flight (2012)) and Steven Culp (James and the Giant Peach (1996)) are both brilliant as President Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and the film sports an exciting, solid secondary cast of men in suits and uniforms being extremely serious, from Dylan Baker and Bill Smitrovich to Michael Fairman and Kevin Conway.
The Cold War grew red hot within hours and stayed so for these climactic 13 days, and the film successfully portrays this maddening time in world history.
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| Kevin Costner, Steven Culp and Bruce Greenwood in Roger Donaldson's Thirteen Days |
The details:
It is well-produced, - and well-scored by Trevor Jones (From Hell (2001)).
Another small detractor, however, is a device that the film uses again and again, which at first made me think that I was seeing flashbacks. B/W-scenes, which are just continuances of the story, but just suddenly in B/W. I guess it is used to underline the historic aspect of what we're seeing, - or perhaps as an 'artistic' idea of pointing to the artifice by Donaldson, (though I don't think so, knowing him through some of his other films.) At any rate, it doesn't elevate the film but does put a space between the story and the audience, which is a shame.
Because this is a really good film.
Unfortunately, the slow release of the film (first limited in the U.S., which seems crazy for this type of event picture) and poor marketing made this a box office bomb, wildly undeserved.
Another sad end note is that O'Donnell, Costner's character, who was very close to the real Kennedy's, was so devastated by the assassinations of first JFK in '64, where he was very close to him and later blamed himself for his death, and then Robert Kennedy in '68 that both he and his wife languished in alcoholism, which killed them both eventually.
The trailer is the single most important piece of marketing for a movie. This one didn't make the business it should. Why? It is over-crowded and political, when it should have presented the one clear, shocking concept that is close to happening in the film: Annihilation
Budget: 80 mil. $
Box office: 66. 5 mil. $
= Big flop
What do you think of Thirteen Days?
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