Thirteen Days, 2000

Roger Donaldson has been directing films since the late 70's... none of them too familiar save The Bounty in 1984, starring Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson. This became the start of a semi-attractive career... but nothing too incredible or stand-out-ish. No Way Out, Cocktail, Cadillac Man, White Sands, The Getaway (never, ever re-make a Sam Peckinpah film, especially one with Steve McQueen), Species and Dante's Peak. His work is mediocre, with big names attached to them. They are films that would, essentially, direct themselves... and that's what I thought of Thirteen Days.

There is some ok camera work, some fades between color and black & white photography, and some decent shots.

There are two different types of directors. One is concerned with the actors. The other is concerned with the look of the film. Sometimes you'll find a director (who usually ends up being a writer, too) who is very capable of both... and we are lucky to have a few of these. I would have to say that Donaldson is the former, a director who works with actors.

The acting, in and of itself, is fine. There are no breakthrough performances here. We're all too familiar with Kevin Costner's work. We've forgiven his discrepencies in the past, and we are usually entertained by his work. I know I was, when it came to films like The Untouchables, Field of Dreams, Silverado, Bull Durham, For Love of the Game... hell, even Dances with Wolves. But his other work is recycled junk. We see the same character over and over again, especially in his baseball films, and I dig those a lot. But you get tired of the voice... you get tired of the stresses on specific words, you can pick out from half a dozen other performances. He wasn't bad. He got the New England accent down just fine... and he played a very smart character... more prevelant than Bruce Greenwood, who portrays JFK.

Greenwood did a fine job, as well. The idea behind this film, the Cuban Missle Crisis, is a hard one to write about. People who lived it, people who visited the local bomb shelters and were curious if there was enough room... people who grew up in the early 1960s... they would be able to appreciate this film for depicting something more than lifelike, more than a biography of America. People who grew up later, who were born in the 1970's and 1980's... they are not going to have the appreciation for the events that took place... nor are they going to feel the suspense that kept people awake for those two weeks... wondering.

On September 30th, 2001... there's an eerie similarity to this film and the events that have unfolded three weeks ago. We've finally been confronted with a force greater than ourselves and we have no basis for comparision. It's similar to watching WWII films, or movies about the Korean War or Vietnam. People my age (I was born in 1973) have heard the stories, possible explanations... and we see Steven Spielberg's rendition of Normandy... Stone's experiences from Vietnam in his trilogy... Stanley Kubrick's take on Vietnam... but none of us can fully appreciate the horror (therefore not leaving out Coppola's Apocalypse Now). We have no basis for comparision. We see bomb shelter's as something retro, not something useful.

So this film came out at an awkward time. It's an educational film, pure and simple. Is it meant to entertain? How could it, in the general idea behind entertainment? It is attempting to shed light on a part of our history... and even though it gives us the highlights, the ideas, certain pressures... the film falls short of really terrorizing us, showing us (people who were yet to be born, even) that we were as lucky as lucky could get that the events did not escalate to a fatal conflict.

I cannot even talk about the other actors in the film... save Steven Culp, who played Bobbie Kennedy. He played his role smart, but that was because he was playing a very important human being... which is what the three stars have in common. They were playing the men who did it. They weren't playing homage, they were acting as ghosts to the bodies of men who fixed the problems. So, in my opinion, the acting, all of the acting, from the generals who were trying to start a war, to the housewives who were scared out of their minds... they all took the backburner to the history and to the 'facts' that were portrayed.

David Self started his career with the god awful film The Haunting. A terrible film, terribly written, with bad dialog and a very sad rendition of a great story. With Thirteen Days, I appreciated the writing for its take on the history of the Cuban Missle Crisis, and the amount of research that must have gone into the film. The dialog was believable, the scenes were well composed and the characters had some semblance of reality. There were no one-liners in the film... that lent to its credibility. I was glad there were no 'my dick is bigger than yours' lines.

Self's next film is based on a comic book called The Road to Perdition, starring Tom Hanks. I am looking forward to seeing this film... I hope it's better than Self's first work. With the material (seeing what he did with Thirteen Days, and the material that was available to him), I have high hopes.

Andrzej Bartkowiak was given credit for the cinematography, though there were two other names listed in the Internet Movie Data Base. This gentleman has shot some very mainstream films for Hollywood... some good, some cheesy, some were big money makers. Deathtrap, The Verdict, Terms of Endearment, Prizzi's Honor, The Morning After, Twins, Falling Down, Speed, and then, in 1995, he hooked up with Donaldson for Species, then Dante's Peak. He would go on to shoot a few other films... The Devil's Advocate, US Marshals and Lethal Weapon 4, before shooting Thirteen Days. All in all, his work was ok. I think from a technical point of view, the film looked very good. There were some great shots, coupled with fantastic editing (which I'll get to), along with the fading of B&W photography that added to the historic nature of the film and its subject matter, no doubt just a trick to gain such symapthies for the film. But, it still worked.

Conrad Buff IV has done some fantastic editing work in his career. His jobs have all been on mainstream work, starting with Jagged Edge, Solarbabies, Spaceballs, Short Circuit 2... and then he hooked up with James Cameron on The Abyss... and stayed with him all the way through to Titanic. T2, Jennifer 8, The Getaway (his first job with Donaldson), True Lies, Species, Dante's Peak, Switchback, Arlington Road, Mystery Men and the recently released Training Day. To be honest... his work, especially with Cameron, shows that he can be trusted with the most personal works around. The films in his career are of a unique spectrum... and it's obvious he does good work, regardless of the type of film. Buff was also one of those guys in the early 80's that helped piece together the visual effects editing of some of the best effects films ever made... The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Poltergeist and Ghostbusters.

All in all, the film is ok. This is one of New Line's Infinifilms, and they take the film up a notch, with some historical background, along with commentaries taken from actualy recordings of JFK and other politicians of the time. It's an all around good film... but the talent (director and actors) really have nothing to do with how this film came about. History writes itself. Collecting it, that's one thing. Polishing it up and making a multi-million dollar educational tool, that's something else. In the end, was it necessary? I doubt it... but it's worth a rental.

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