December 25, 2000 | Thirteen Days is an earnestly foursquare and unabashedly old-fashioned movie, which is just fine, maybe even perfect. When you have a true-life story as compelling as the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, you have little need for melodramatic excess, high-tech pyrotechnics, or self-consciously trendy stylistic flourishes. Indeed, Thirteen Days is all the more gripping for being written, directed and acted with such scrupulous restraint, and for being rendered with a stark simplicity that intensifies each turning of the screw, every raising of the stakes, during a fortnight of nuclear brinkmanship.

Drawing from reams of historical records - including transcripts of conversations taped inside the Oval Office during October 1962 - screenwriter David Self has fashioned a lucid and suspenseful narrative that vividly conveys the tenor of the times and the enormity of the danger. Director Roger Donaldson (No Way Out) serves the material exceedingly well by maintaining an efficiently brisk pace without ever sacrificing clarity or obfuscating context. You know that things will turn out OK, of course. But the greatest strength of Thirteen Days is its ability to make you fully aware of how easily events could have taken a different course.

The countdown begins when President John F. Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood), still smarting from the embarrassment of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, finds Cuba once again at the top of his agenda. Spy-plane photographs reveal Soviet "advisors" are installing medium-range ballistic missiles on Cuban soil. These offensive nuclear weapons - which, if fired, could destroy key U.S. cities in a matter of minutes - are just days away from being fully operational. Predictably, the Soviet Union denies any knowledge of the missiles. Just as predictably, President Kennedy's military chiefs - spearheaded by the blunt-talking, saber-rattling Gen. Curtis LeMay (Kevin Conway) - argue for an immediate invasion of Cuba.

All of which places President Kennedy in the profoundly uneasy position of deciding whether to ignite World War III. He knows that, if he does OK a Cuban invasion, the Soviets will respond in kind - more than likely, by rolling into West Germany - and the tit for tat could continue until nuclear exchanges reduce world capitals to rubble.

On the other hand, being leader of the free world means being ready to push the button - or at least being able to make friends and foes think you're ready. Allowing missiles in Cuba would send a bad sign to the Soviet Union. Worse, it might confirm the worst suspicions of Gen. LeMay and other members of the military brass, who skirt close to insubordination while questioning President Kennedy's judgment.

"Looks like you're in a pretty bad fix," Gen. LeMay remarks, without much sympathy, during a face-off with the president. "Well," JFK replies, "maybe you haven't noticed, but you're in it with me."

Kevin Costner provides the marquee allure in Thirteen Days, playing - with an initially broad, but ultimately acceptable, Boston accent - White House advisor Kenny O'Donnell. To his credit, however, Costner dims his superstar wattage to give a subdued and subtly effective supporting performance, serving primarily to provide a narrative point of view.

Costner dutifully recedes into the background whenever it's time for Bruce Greenwood to command the screen with his complex and compelling portrayal of JFK. It's no small measure of Greenwood's skill that, even though he doesn't particularly resemble President Kennedy, he effortlessly conveys the essence of the familiar public persona. (Greenwood and his director respect the audience too much to over-sell anything: When he briefly winces while sitting down in the Oval Office, that's all we need to see to recall JFK's chronically painful back injuries.) Better still, Greenwood comes across as a flesh-and-blood human, not a larger-than-life deity, in his moments of doubt and not-so-quiet desperation. Thirteen Days isn't so radical or revisionist as to upset those who revere the legends of the 20th-century Camelot. But the movie does indicate that, when the chips were down, JFK could be as hard-nosed and ruthlessly expedient as any other Cold Warrior.

And speaking of ruthless: Steven Culp brings a similar touch of steel-willed determination to his aptly forceful performance as Robert Kennedy, a man who laughs - but does not smile - while acknowledging his reputation as his brother's chief hatchet man.

In addition to Conway, who plays LeMay with just the right edge of transparent contempt, standout supporting players include Dylan Baker as Robert McNamara, who dares to suggest that blockading Cuba might be preferable to bombing the country, and Michael Fairman as Adlai Stevenson, who demonstrates a different sort of bravery during a face-off with a Soviet representative at the United Nations.

For a contemporary audience, perhaps the most disturbing thing about Thirteen Days isn't the back-channel wheeler-dealing, or the specter of nuclear Armageddon, or even JFK's repeated warnings that war could happen simply because all the generals expected it to happen. (He had read The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman's history of World War I, and took its lessons to heart.) No, the spookiest aspect of the movie is the technology on display -- the computers and weaponry and communications systems that may have been cutting-edge, state-of-the-art stuff back in 1962, that now look so antiquated, so inadequate to the task at hand. It's a bit like watching Apollo 13, and wondering -- even if you have first-hand memories of the dramatized events -- how on Earth they ever managed to blast those guys into space in the first place, much less rescue them when their spacecraft malfunctioned. You watch Thirteen Days, and you can't help shuddering as you figure: Any one of those things could have blown a fuse or stripped a gear, and the world would have ended.