Costner too visible in 'Thirteen Days'

By STEVE PERSALL

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 11, 2001

His star power elevates a supporting role to the forefront and distracts from an otherwise well-paced history lesson.

Each new movie starring Kevin Costner makes it harder to recall why he became a star in the first place. The effortless way he once conveyed integrity now seems like he isn't really trying.

Yet, we know Costner is trying because he strains so much doing it. His pensive expressions contain a bit too much brood. Each pregnant pause seems just a little too planned. When he's seriously planning to impress, Costner adopts an accent. Something like his Boston chowdah tones in Roger Donaldson's historical thriller Thirteen Days.

Few people who will see this movie know what former White House adviser Kenny O'Donnell sounds like. It simply isn't necessary for Costner to warp his consonants and talk through his nose. Even the actors playing John and Robert Kennedy in this sturdy rehash of the Cuban missile crisis don't overextend themselves sounding like Kennedys.

Costner sounds like he's still attempting to convince Donaldson that he, not Bruce Greenwood, should be playing JFK. Instead, Costner lands in the awkward position of being the movie's sole celebrity playing a supporting role that, by some accounts, inflates O'Donnell's contribution to saving the world from nuclear war in 1962. History may have been re-created to suit Costner's above-the-title billing.

Ignore Costner's vocal stunt and the way O'Donnell always ends up giving the Kennedys pep talks at crucial times. Thirteen Days would be better off without the movie star whose production clout and devotion to Camelot got the movie made. Even in the background, Costner's famous face makes him a distraction.

Otherwise, Thirteen Days is a well-paced history lesson. Kind of like the You Are There episode that Walter Cronkite wishes he had the budget to make. Donaldson creates an authentic mood, almost documentary style, with commendable tension for a story whose ending we already know. There aren't any Oliver Stone bombshells dropped, just a detailed outline of a few paragraphs in high school textbooks.

The basic facts: In October 1962, a CIA surveillance jet snapped photographs of Soviet missiles under construction in Cuba, despite the Kremlin's assurance that none existed. President Kennedy ordered his military and political braintrust into emergency mode to force the removal of the weapons without nuclear hostility. After 13 days of going eyeball-to-eyeball with our Cold War nemesis, as one Kennedy adviser said: "The other guy blinked."

How we learned to stop worrying and tolerate the Bomb is the focus of David Self's meticulous screenplay. Thirteen Days is best when it adds footnotes to the hard facts, like a pushy telephone operator hired to make arm-twisting calls to congressmen, or giving a stern face (Kevin Conway's bristly Gen. Curtis LeMay) to the military establishment that mistrusted JFK and stoked Stone's paranoia.

At the center of the crisis is Greenwood's carefully measured portrayal of John Kennedy. Whatever the performance misses in vocal or physical resemblance is compensated by the actor's sense of the role's posterity. Greenwood doesn't need to imitate JFK to firmly establish the president's leadership abilities and private worries. Self's script leaves the deification of the Kennedys to Costner's character. Everybody else looks at them with veiled hope, trust and suspicion, like reality must have been.

Steven Culp has a closer resemblance to Robert Kennedy, but the aura is effectively the same. The brotherly bond between JFK and RFK is made tangible without melodramatic dialogue. Greenwood and Culp work well together with knowing glances and familiarity disguised by protocol. Viewers can leave Thirteen Days feeling they know icons better, adding dramatic blood to their marble busts.

Donaldson keeps his facts in order, like a professor's lecture notes, delivered with as much vitality as debating heads can manage. Thirteen Days needs more background on how the nation responded helplessly to the threat, and comic relief is almost non-existent. The film should be a staple of American history lesson plans forever, shedding light on two American heroes and one highly recognizable mascot.

Thirteen Days

• Grade: B
• Director: Roger Donaldson
• Cast: Kevin Costner, Bruce Greenwood, Steven Culp, Dylan Baker, Len Cariou, Kevin Conway
• Screenplay: David Self, based on the book The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis by Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow
• Rating: PG-13; profanity
• Running time: 145 min.

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