Thirteen Days poster & wallpaper

Kevin Costner, Lucinda Jenney, Bruce Greenwood

The film is set during the two-week Cuban missile crisis in October of 1962, and it centers on how President John F. Kennedy, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and others handled the explosive situatio...( read more  read more... )n.

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77% liked it

25,185 ratings

Critics

82% liked it

114 critics

PG-13, 2 hrs. 25 min.

Directed by: Roger Donaldson

Release Date: December 25, 2000

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DVD Release Date: July 10, 2001

Stats: 1,019 reviews

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Kevin Costner as Kenny O'Donnell in Thirteen Days (2000) Steven Culp as Robert F. Kennedy in Thirteen Days (2000) Steven Culp as Robert F. Kennedy, Kevin Costner as Kenny O'Donnell and director Roger Donaldson in Thirteen Days (2000) Kevin Costner as Kenny O'Donnell, Steven Culp as Robert F. Kennedy and Bruce Greenwood as John F. Kennedy in Thirteen Days (2000) Cuban military build-up as depicted in Thirteen Days (2000) Steven Culp as Robert F. Kennedy in Thirteen Days (2000) Kevin Costner as Kenny O'Donnell in Thirteen Days (2000) Thirteen Days (2000) (clockwise from center) Bruce Greenwood as John F. Kennedy, Steven Culp as Robert F. Kennedy, Tim Kelleher as Ted Soresnsen and Frank Wood as McGeorge Bundy and Walter Adrian as Lyndon B. Johnson in Thirteen Days (2000) Steven Culp as Robert F. Kennedy, Bruce Greenwood as John F. Kennedy and Kevin Costner as Kenny O'Donnell in Thirteen Days (2000) Bruce Greenwood as John F. Kennedy in Thirteen Days (2000) Kevin Costner as Kenny O'Donnell with Bruce Greenwood as John F. Kennedy in Thirteen Days (2000) Steven Culp as Robert F. Kennedy, Kevin Costner as Kenny O'Donnell and Bruce Greenwood as John F. Kennedy in Thirteen Days (2000) Steven Culp as Robert F. Kennedy, Bruce Greenwood as John F. Kennedy and Kevin Costner as Kenny O'Donnell in Thirteen Days (2000) Dylan Baker as Robert McNamara with Steven Culp as Robert F. Kennedy in Thirteen Days (2000) Thirteen Days
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Flixster Reviews (1,019)

  • dreamfaeries
    September 10, 2008
    dreamfaeries
    This movie surprised me. I wasn't interested in watching but somehow got wrapped into it. Not so bad.
  • Redlats
    March 30, 2008
    Redlats
    I was amazed that I had not seen this before now (2008). This falls into my realm of great movies - a thrilling, non-stop action, intelligent account of the Cuban missile crisis. I was a kid when it happened, and I had not heard many of the details, but if what the Kennedy admi...( read more)nistration had to go through was even half of what they showed in this movie, man are we all lucky they were there.
  • Chiefilms
    March 3, 2008
    Chiefilms
    Costner trying to put on a New England accent.
  • gor41
    January 9, 2008
    gor41
    Gripping political thriller which manages to hold you transfixed at each turn despite knowing the eventual outcome. You can't get more dramatic than the intense stress these men were under to make crucial decisions for the future of mankind on earth. Beyond scary.
  • ladyp1964
    January 8, 2008
    ladyp1964
    what should I say...... I think you need to be in the right mood to watch a political film and unfortunately I wasn't in the right mood.
  • voodoomarijuana
    November 2, 2009
    voodoomarijuana
    SLOW BUT INFORMATIVE like the histroy channel with good actors
  • Elinix
    September 24, 2009
    Elinix
    This is how close we were. It's insane. This was reality some forty years ago, and that is why it's the most thrlling movie I have ever seen. It brings the biggest almost-disaster in human history back.
  • ElCochran90
    September 18, 2009
    ElCochran90
    Non-stop excitement and suspense, very decent development.

    63/100
  • steven544
    July 11, 2009
    steven544
    Sometimes Kevin Costner just can't be told. On Tin Cup he couldn't be told that a scene of him beating a security guard to a bloody pulp because he forgot his ID card wasn't going to endear him to the audience in a romcom (I never saw the finished film, but I believe the preview ...( read more)audiences succeeded in getting that scene cut). In The Postman he couldn't be told that ending a film with a statue of him being unveiled was really not a good idea. At all. And in Thirteen Days he couldn't be told that adopting a Boston accent was not a good idea when it makes him sound just like Elmer Fudd. For the first quarter of an hour you're just waiting for him to say "Be wewwy, wewwy qwuiet. I'm hunting Wussian Miss-eyells." So it's a testament to the strength of the film that it survives that hurdle and emerges as a gripping thriller even though we all know the ending.


    Although Costner gets top billing, the film really belongs to Bruce Greenwood and Steven Culp as JFK and Bobby Kennedy, avoiding impersonation (and the accent) to give quite superb performances. While the film is occasionally guilty of overglamorizing the dynamic duo, it's surprising to see just how little control they were able to exercise over the Chiefs of Staff who seemed hell-bent on escalating the Cuban Missile Crisis into a full-scale invasion. Considering the final result, it seems particularly timely now to see a drama about a president desperate to avoid a pointless war over weapons of mass destruction that he knew DID exist at a time when we have a president who was desperate to start a pointless war over weapons that he knew DIDN'T exist: for all the corruption, spin and dilettantism of the Kennedy administration, this was one of those fortuitous examples of the right leader at the right time.

    The film certainly manages to pull off the rare achievement of instilling a real sense of pride not in action but in diplomacy, with most of the drama taking place in conference rooms (although there are a couple of genuinely exciting pieces of film-making in the spy flights over Cuba). Indeed, perhaps the most genuinely stirring moment is Adlai Stevenson calling the Russian ambassador's bluff at the UN, the sort of thing which doesn't exactly pull in the kids at the multiplex. This doesn't always pay dividends, however. The biggest problem is that it loses tension by being so confined to the political and military players: there's no sense of the very real fear that spread throughout the world that this really was IT and that the mushroom clouds would start sprouting any minute. As a result the movie does begin to lose its grip towards the end, and doesn't entirely dodge mawkishness. The sporadic early shifts from color to black and white are a real failure, too. With the archive footage in color, there simply seems no reason for them, and they seem to have been thrown in arbitrarily purely to give it an imagined cutting edge. Still, they're fairly minor flaws in an impressive thriller.
  • barbs711
    July 5, 2009
    barbs711
    A little slow... but really interesting!! =D

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Critic Reviews

January 12, 2001
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

Thirteen Days is a good movie about a profound moment in world history. full review

January 12, 2001
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

I call the movie a thriller, even though the outcome is known, because it plays like one. full review

View more Thirteen Days reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

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Thirteen Days Trivia

  • What movie has these quotes: "I am the Commander-in-Chief of the United States, and I say when we go to WAR!" "Listen. You tell them those chains of command end up at one place - ME!"  Answer »
  • Name the director who links these movies? Species Cocktail Dante's Peak Cadillac Man The Worlds Fastest Indian Thirteen Days The Recruit  Answer »
  • Bruce Greenwood played JFK in what film from 2000?  Answer »
  • who played jfk's special advisor in Thirteen Days?  Answer »
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