THIRTEEN DAYS (2000) **1/2 It's certainly the stuff of high drama, tormented and flawed good guys battling bad guys from all angles, with the survival of the world at stake. It's also true, depending. Something like this surely happened, it worked out well considering the alternatives, and more than a little bit of courage and dice-rolling were involved. That this version might be just a little bit skewed towards "How I Saved the World, by Kenny O'Donnell portrayed particularly heroically by Kevin Costner, and as told to other people" point more to participant's prerogative than anything else, isn't enough to have been there (and everyone remembers things from the perspective that is akin to the one they advance in times of crisis)? Roger Donalson does an excellent job of presenting an intricate and nuanced fact situation coherently. I don't doubt that the military was run by lunatics, at least then if not always-think of what garners laurels and promotion, and my considered opinion is that the Kennedy brothers were heroic to the extent limited by their milieu. Whether JFK, or later Bobby, was on the verge of breaking free of the presented paradigm is a live question, and one dealt with considerably by Oliver Stone in JFK. The problem here is casting, or perhaps the impossibility of it. We all know what John and Robert Kennedy looked like, and those guys on the screen aren't them. Bruce Greenwood and Steven Culp also lack the charisma, sense of depth, and emotional incendiary effects of the politicians they portray. Perhaps the principal indictment presented by this film is that it highlights the absence of contemporary political leaders whose portrayal would present similar problems.
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