"Thirteen Days" screenwriter David Self writes in his script that the sun rises every morning due only to the will of good men, and this tiny stronghold of well-meaning individuals spends their days saving the world from evil. One simple mistake, one tiny misjudgment by one of them, and humankind may never see the sun again.
While this may sound oversimplified, the important thing is that in his film, director Roger Donaldson slowly convinces us scene by scene that this is indeed true. Even more importantly, the screenplay makes the difference between the good and evil men so slight, so undetectable, that the importance of these men increases exponentially. Some of them -- although it's difficult to decide who -- will decide whether the sun rises tomorrow.
"Thirteen Days" chronicles the events surrounding the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. The film is distinctly a Hollywood production and never pretends to be a documentary, but enough documentaries have been made on the subject already. While Self paid attention to historical accuracy, he smartly focused more on writing a compelling political thriller.
Maintaining suspense when writing about a historical event is a difficult task, but he succeeds admirably. Like the astounding "Apollo 13," everything feels exhilarating and frightening. Enough tension mounts throughout that even though everyone knows the end result, it's still a big relief when the conflict finally resolves.
Self obviously has a soft spot in his heart for the Kennedys, but he never paints them as gods. While many of the characters in his film are not particularly deep, their interactions and motivations have a great deal of complexity.
John F. Kennedy (played convincingly by Bruce Greenwood) acts with deep compassion and altruism, but it's not always clear that he is one of the "good men." Some of his decisions lead us closer to war, and the screenplay emphasizes that although the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Air Force General seem too hard-edged, they could be the ones that may save the country from attack. Sometimes, the obvious good guys are not necessarily good, and the seemingly callous ones may save us from nuclear war.
Luckily, Donaldson generally avoids grandstanding; there are surprisingly few scenes with unnerving music combined with red-faced politicians screaming loudly at each other (see "The Contender" or "U-571," both too overwrought). Instead, the actors speak with a distinct weight to their words without pushing themselves too far. Even when political advisor Dean Acheson (played by Len Cariou) places his career on the line in a strategy meeting, he does so with the conviction of a mouse; he conveys the importance of his lines through shyness instead of overacting.
The film necessarily contains much talk about the rules of engagement -- whether they should be followed, their relevancy and their timeliness. Combined with this are some heavy-handed football metaphors; footballs tend to pop-up in the hands of the president and advisers at odd times, and at one point, presidential adviser Kenny O'Donnell (Kevin Costner with an overly-exaggerated Boston accent) spends some time watching his son play a game of football. The implications are a bit too clear; the strategy involved in the crisis is as complex and meaningless as the strategy in football. Still, the point can be appreciated, and there is some poignancy in watching O'Donnell's son, who is unaware of the graveness of the crisis.
Intertwined with the taut scenes in a re-creation of the 1960s White House, Donaldson uses stock photos of exploding bombs and launching missiles. In some scenes, Walter Cronkite floats ominously on televisions in the background. At times, Donaldson even transitions some shots into black and white without warning. All of these techniques serve as a frightening reminder that the events of the movie actually happened.
And even though Donaldson dramatizes the events, they seem as though they are actually happening because identification with these powerful men is easy. They all want to do the right thing, but in situations like the Cuban missile crisis, guessing that right thing is almost impossible. As each presidential adviser attempts to persuade JFK that his crisis solution is correct, we want each to be right because we could see ourselves making the same argument. Like them, we all want to be good men. We all want the sun to come up tomorrow.
