In October 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union had a staring contest that is commonly referred to as The Cuban Missile Crisis.  Everyone knows the story – the Soviets put nukes in Cuba, President Kennedy furrowed his brow and orchestrated a sea blockade of the island, then the missiles were dismantled and sent back to Red soil.  The event is referred to as a "crisis" because the two countries nearly wound up in a nuclear arm-wrestling match, but, thankfully, cooler heads prevailed.

The Crisis serves as the subject for Thirteen Days, the new $80-million, two-and-a-half-hour film that features Kevin Costner as John F. Kennedy’s influential political advisor, Kenny O'Donnell.  Like the real O’Donnell, who became an alcoholic after Kennedy was assassinated following The Crisis, Costner (For Love of the Game) sports a thick Boston accent that turns words like "Cuba" into “Q-ber.”  One of the members of “The Irish Mafia” that rode Kennedy’s coattails to Washington, O’Donnell had a loving wife (played by Remember the Titans’ Lucinda Jenney) and five good-looking kids – a point Days doesn’t let you forget.

Using a generous amount of stock footage and black-and-white clips (which makes Days’ director Roger Donaldson look like a third-rate Oliver Stone), the film does a decent job recreating the tension that ran through the White House when surveillance photos revealed the delivery of the Russian nukes to Cuba.  The missiles, which wouldn’t be operable for a couple of weeks, would be capable of striking any target in the continental United States.

President Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood, Rules of Engagement), his brother and the U.S. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy (Steven Culp), and a gaggle of others had to decide how to handle the situation.  Too much force would cause the Soviets to invade Berlin, and too little could lead to a decisive Russian first strike.  The decision boiled down to a military strike and Cuban invasion, or a blockade that would prevent an incoming fleet of ships from delivering more weapons to the tiny island.

This debate grows incredibly tiresome during the film, although, surprisingly, it only consumes the first half of Days.  Most people think The Crisis ended when the Russians blinked and turned their ships around, but recently declassified information gives Days enough content to stretch itself out for another 75 minutes.  Since this part of the story isn’t as well known, I’ll leave out the gritty details.  It’s interesting and all, but it didn’t need to be anywhere near this long.

Costner, who also produced the film (which may explain the ungodly running time), does an admirable job with his accent, although his role doesn’t really offer much else to get excited about.  Greenwood’s JFK looks eerily like a dark-haired David Caruso and spends almost all of his time gritting his teeth and staring out the windows of the White House (watching for Marilyn’s car, no doubt).  Culp, who played Bobby Kennedy in HBO's Norma Jean & Marilyn, sounds just like Richie Cunningham, while Dylan Baker (The Cell) turns in another strong performance as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.

Director Donaldson (Dante’s Peak), a coworker with Costner in 1987’s No Way Out, does a horrible job of keeping the film interesting.  Everybody knows how the first half of the film is going to shake out, and everybody also knows how it’s going to end.  There is no reason Donaldson needed to keep Days this long, other than making the film’s length seem more Oscarworthy.  His continual use of nuclear weapon detonation throughout the film (as a “what if” scenario) and the inclusion of O’Donnell’s family life is clumsy and calculated.

Days was written by David Self (The Haunting), who based his script on a book called “The Kennedy Tapes - Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis," which was written by Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow.  There are a bunch of scenes in the film that are supposed to be dramatic but end up being corny (one even features Chip Esten from the comedy improv television show Whose Line is it Anyway?).  And Days uses the term “rules of engagement” about a dozen times, so it almost seems like the script is rubbing the failure of Greenwood’s last project in his face.

2:25 –

for brief strong language