Roger Donaldson directed this very nice film about the event in history that brought the world the closest it's ever been to nuclear war. This movie is about the thirteen days in October 1962 when President John Kennedy and his staff discovered nuclear weapons on the island of Cuba, which historically became to be known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. The movie does a nice job of presenting the events in an almost documentary fashion. However, while the story was great, the acting was a mixed bag of greatness and mediocrity which drags the movie down. But the movie is still worth watching if you want to see a movie on JFK and how close we came to the apocalypse.

The basic premise is that the Soviets gave the Cubans nuclear weapons and tried to do so without the U.S.A. knowledge. Furthermore, when President Kennedy discovered the weapons and, eventually, accused the Russians of doing this deed, they categorically denied it. This led to one of the most famous speeches given by the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson, in which he told the Soviet Ambassador the he was "prepared to wait until Hell freezes over…" for an answer. Since we are all still here, the Russians backed down and took the missiles out of Cuba. This movie assumes, yet to my knowledge it is only speculation, that Kennedy guaranteed to the Russians that we would not invade Cuba, and we would move older nuclear weapons out of Turkey. The significance is that this gives fuel to one of the many conspiracy theories floating around about the assignation of JFK. Because of his apparent soft stance on Russian, and Kennedy's desire to pull out of Vietnam, the US Military and the CIA helped in the assignation of President Kennedy.

One nice thing about this movie and its something we will never see again is that it shows how the President could keep a story from being printed in the Newspaper. The Washington Post got wind of what was going on in Cuba and what we were planning on doing and was going to print the article. However, the President was able to call the editor of the paper and delay the release of the article until Kennedy could tell America what was going on and how they were going to react. In this world of 24 hour news, this would never happen, and its too bad because there are some things that, in my opinion, the people do not need to know everything for their own safety. Those who lived during Nixon and Watergate would disagree, but fuck those liberals, lets have a little fascicim now and then.

Bruce Greenwood (I, Robot) does a magnificent job of portraying President Kennedy. He shows the emotion that I imagine the President had during these two weeks. His accent was believable and he was a perfect fit for Steven Culp (Spartan,) who played his brother Robert Kennedy. Culp had played Robert Kennedy before and his portrayal again to me seemed realistic. Unfortunately, the actor that did the worst job was the one man who we all recognize, Kevin Costner (Dances With Wolves) portrayed Kennedy's assistant Kenny O'Donnell. His accent is horrible and he appears only to be there to be the conscience of the President. His character just didn't seem believable. I also have issue with the actor who portrayed Robert McNamara. But this is off because when I watched the movie in the theater, I though it was great. However since then the actual Robert McNamara was involved in a documentary, Fog of War, and since then I don't feel the portrayal is very accurate. But I won't hold it against him.

The writing and directing was great just because even though I knew how these events happened, the movie kept me in suspense on how it was going to unfold. This is something hard to do when making a movie about historical events. I commend Roger Donaldson (The Recruit,) and writer David Self (Road to Perdition.)

Go ahead and watch this movie and see how the world was in a lot more danger in the 1960's and why we have to be proactive as a nation, instead of reactive.

Brian - the Naked Gun