January 22, 2001 -- "Thirteen Days" is a spine-chilling thriller of the highest order. If you don't think it is a thriller because you know how it is going to end, just remember that little movie called "Titanic."

You know how this story ends because civilization still exists. That's how high the stakes were in October of 1962 when the world's two mightiest superpowers, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R squared off in the scariest game in history: nuclear brinksmanship. The world came within a gnat's eyelash of World War III. This movie gives you an idea of how close it really was, and how key men on both sides of the nuclear brink had to have the most delicate judgement under the highest stress imaginable in order to back away.

This was just 17 years after the end of World War II. The sneak attacks by the Japanese against the U.S. and by the Germans against the Russians were still fresh in the minds of the generals of both nations. Satellite and computer technologies were still in their infancy. There was no "hot line" between Moscow and Washington. That would be installed because of this crisis. There was no Internet. There was no easy way for the leaders of the two countries to communicate, other than phone calls and clumsy teletype machines. The chance for misunderstandings was high.

The story is told through a White House insider, Kenny O'Donnell (played by Kevin Costner of "For Love of the Game"). O'Donnell, an Irish Catholic friend of the President, John F. Kennedy (played by Bruce Greenwood of "Rules of Engagement"), and the President's brother, Bobby, (played by Steven Culp "James and the Giant Peach") the U.S. Attorney General. O'Donnell sat in on all the key meetings and gave counsel, mainly because he was trusted by the Kennedy's. If the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba was Kennedy's nadir, the Cuban Missile Crisis was his zenith. The movie has the Kennedys and other key civilian advisors holding fast against a military establishment that was seemingly hell bent on total destruction.

The Kennedys were very young and were considered too inexperienced to handle the crisis by the old generals. Their father, Joseph Kennedy, had supported the disastrous political course of appeasing Hitler prior to World War II. The generals had good reason not to trust the Kennedys. However, the Kennedys would wind up proving the old adage that war, and certainly strategic diplomacy, is far too important a thing to leave up to generals. The movie depicts their primary nemisis as General Curtis LeMay, commander of the Air Force (played by Kevin Conway of "Looking for Richard"). LeMay and the other generals were portrayed as using every bit of wiggle room they could find in the authorized rules of engagement to provoke a military incident. There were rocket launches, anti aircraft fire, even a hydrogen bomb test during the crisis made both sides more jittery.

It may be the military wasn't trying to provoke an incident at all, however, even though the military strongly favored an air strike in Cuba, followed by an invasion of that country. The military may have just been following standard practices, practices which were dangerously destabilizing this very delicate situation. Kennedy and others in the movie mentioned Barbara Tuchman's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "The Guns of August," as having a strong influence on their thinking during the crisis. The book explains how World War I started by a similar series of blunders and miscalculations, fueled by a lack of understanding about how technology had changed the nature of war. It is probably no coincidence that a very good made-for-television movie made about the crisis was to be called "The Missiles of October." Could this be an instance where someone actually learned something from history? The movie suggests that "The Guns of August," helped key decision-makers like the Kennedys and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (Dylan Baker of "The Cell") to recognize military traps similar to those which caused World War I, and that helped them avoid being pulled into World War III.

The incident started, of course, when photos from a U2 spy plane revealed to the U.S. that the Soviets were placing missiles in Cuba. These missiles were capable of carrying atomic warheads as far away as Washington, D.C. The U.S. would have about five minutes warning of a nuclear attack. This would give the Soviets an effective "first strike" capability. That, in turn would seriously destabilize the balance of power between the Soviets and the U.S. The U.S. could not allow the missiles to become operational. There was only a few days in which to act. The military wanted an air strike to knock out the missiles. Kennedy feared this would lead to all out war. He told his brother in a Captain Kirk-like fashion that he wanted another option and he wanted it fast.

Director Roger Donaldson ("Dante's Peak") keeps the tension as tight as a piano wire as obstacle after obstacle to peace keeps popping up, running the crisis out longer and longer until the deadline is only hours away. The movie correctly reveals that an ABC television reporter, John Scali (played by Jack Blessing) acted as a "back door diplomat" during the crisis, exchanging information with a Soviet spy, Alexander Feklisov, AKA Alexander Fomin (played by Boris Lee Krutonog). There are false messages and crossed signals on the diplomatic front as well as the military front during the crisis.

This movie has a huge cast of characters, way too many for me to keep track of, yet, at the same time, the film stays focused on the central characters, the inner circle around the Kennedys. That is how the story stays sharp amid the storm, stress and chaos of the crisis. Costner may not be at the center of the storm, but he is very close to it. He does a great job conveying the stress and tension of the crisis. Greenwood and Culp do a good job portraying the Kennedys, even though the Boston accents are inconsistent and they don't really look like them. Len Cariou does a good job as the old political warrior, Dean Acheson, who still has some fight in him. Olek Krupa of "Blue Streak," as Andrei Gromyko and Elya Baskin of "October Sky" as Anatoly Dobrynin are good as the top Soviet diplomats.

The cinematography by Andrzej Bartkowiak, Roger Deakins and Christopher Duddy is very good considering the wide variety of shots needed, covering everything from claustrophobic tension-filled rooms to the stratospheric flights of spy planes to naval action below and on the high seas. The screenplay by David Self, based on a book by Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, "The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis," is excellent. I don't know how accurate the story is, but I recognize numerous elements from other accounts I've read and seen about this famous crisis. What makes this story special is that it doesn't fragment the overall picture by trying to view it from multiple vantage points. We see many people in many situations, diplomatic, political and military. Often, they don't see the big picture, but we do, thanks to a fine screenplay and brilliant direction. This film rates an A.

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