“You’ll never believe how close we came.” Director Roger Donaldson puts this phrase front and center in Thirteen Days, a dramatized, yet fairly accurate view of a period where the U.S. was on the brink of disaster. Thirteen Days is a political thriller that revolves around the Cuban Missile Crisis and how President Kennedy and his administration narrowly prevented World War III. The entire ordeal wasn’t as smooth as history textbooks make it seem, however, with many twists, turns, blunders, and narrow victories. The film doesn’t focus on any one particular person, but chooses to focus on the tension experienced by the entire Kennedy administration behind closed doors. However, the film presents Kenny O’Donnell, one of JFK’s close advisors, …show more content…
meeting, a reporter meets with the President to explain that he is in contact with the KGB’s top spy, who claims to be a back channel leading directly to Khrushchev, the Soviet leader. The reporter meets with the spy to tell him the President’s plan for the trade, which the spy relays back to Khrushchev. That night, the White House receives a lengthy letter, presumably from Khrushchev, saying that he will agree to remove the missiles as long as the U.S. promises to never invade Cuba. A second letter was sent the following morning, however, saying that the deal is off, and EXCOM assumes the worst: there was a coup and that the Soviet government is operating through a “puppet Khrushchev.” The situation continued to escalate when a U-2 plane was shot down by the Soviets, which almost forced the President to …show more content…
The film also uses black and white filters to make a narrative jump from one day/event to the next. Donaldson also nailed many of the details to help the film feel more authentic to the time period, such as horn-rimmed glasses, rotary-dial telephones, and cameras with flash bulbs (Nelson). While the film gets many of the small details right, from the attire to the character’s behaviors and even real excerpts from Walter Kronkite’s televised coverage, there are a few historical inconsistencies. One of the major differences between reality and the movie, for example, was Kenny O’Donnell’s role in the crisis. O’Donnell was involved in the crisis, but his actions were largely inflated in the movie. In fact, he is barely seen in the Kennedy tapes that were recorded during the course of the crisis, and what little he contributed to solving the problem was deemed insignificant to the final outcome of the event (Ebert). Nevertheless, the film shows all the major events that happened during the course of the crisis: the discovery of the missiles, discussing the unthinkable scenario of an airstrike or invasion, the decision to “blockade” Cuba, and, finally, receiving the two letters from Khrushchev, yet only acknowledging the second one (Goldfield