Thirteen Days Movie Analysis

Roger Donaldson’s film, Thirteen Days dramatizes the Kennedy administration reaction to the Cuban Missile Crisis. The film discusses a time when the United States had come close to a nuclear war with other nations. The film mainly focuses on showing the audience the United States perspective of the crisis. The Cuban Missile crisis was a thirteen-day long confrontation between the United States, Cuba, and the Soviet Union. This crisis started out when both the United States and the Soviet Union wanted to be seen as the most superior nation in the world. Therefore, both nations decided to use the technology they had in order to produce nuclear missiles and other weapons to show the globe how powerful they were as nations. The United States and

In the film Robert Kennedy exaggerated the range of the Soviet missiles on Cuba having said that the missiles “could level every American city except Seattle” (“Counter Punch Thirteen Days Is Accurate Where It Counts”). Donaldson mainly focused on the United States reaction towards the Cuban Missile Crisis. Additionally, Donaldson does not take into consideration how much background knowledge his audience have regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis for both the United States and the Soviet Union. In the first scenes Donaldson immediately dives into the moment where President Kennedy is told by his administration the there are Soviet Missiles in Cuba. President Kennedy is notified of the missiles placed in Cuba by the Soviet Union he immediately consults his administration team. Robert “Bobby” Kennedy who is a member of the Kennedy’s administration in the film is portrayed as the individual who was immediately able to “create a peaceful solution” (“Thirteen Days Film Review”) that ended the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet, the film does not highlight the long process it took for the United States and the Soviet Union to come to a compromise. The United States and Soviets actually came to a consensus when the United States said it would remove its missiles from Turkey after the Soviet Union removed their

Donnell in the Thirteen Days is shown as the individual who President Kennedy asked advice from during important decisions, but in most of President Kennedy’s autobiographies Donnell is never mentioned (“Counter Punch Thirteen Days Is Accurate Where It Counts”). The reason why Donnell is never mentioned in auto biographies of President Kennedy is because the authors had so much to include that they forget about all the main team members behind the scenes who help with making important decisions. Furthermore, I think that Donaldson made the right decision to make Donnell one of the main characters of Thirteen Days because Donnell is not well known to the public as being part of the Kennedy