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60A tense and engrossing political thriller.
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30A thoroughly bland and mediocre movie about the Cuban missile crisis.
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65Assiduous, temperate, and a lot more honest about government and politicians than any other Hollywood film of the last few decades, Thirteen Days is nevertheless too little, too late.
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100Fascinating in its depiction of presidential leadership in action.
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88An excellent movie about a real-life nail-biter, forcefully acted, true to its period and directed with clarity.
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75I call the movie a thriller, even though the outcome is known, because it plays like one: We may know that the world doesn't end, but the players in this drama don't, and it is easy to identify with them.
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75The subject is so gripping that you almost forgive the filmmakers for skewing their material in order to keep Costner's pretty face at the center of everything that happens.
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75A deeply involving and disturbing movie.
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75Once this 2 1/4-hour slow-starter finally finds its rhythm, we're reminded of how gripping policy give-and-take around a long rectangular table can be.
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75Greenwood, whose range has carried him from the lonely widower of "The Sweet Hereafter" to the creepy husband of "Double Jeopardy," gives a star-making performance.
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70Thoroughly gripping.
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67A suspenseful breath of fresh air following on the heels of one of the dumbest Hollywood summers in recent memory.
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91A big, square, rousing political thriller docudrama.
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91A mesmerizingly suspenseful drama.
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83One of the most exciting American movies about recent political history since, ironically, Oliver Stone's "JFK."
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70I much prefer the whacked-out, Dr. Strangelove-ish brand of political-apocalypse film to all this straitlaced you-are-there dramaturgy, which seems a throwback to the early sixties not only in time but in spirit. But what Thirteen Days sets out to do it does admirably.
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70A refreshing breakaway from both idolatry and cynicism.
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70Dealing with all these crises and decisions gives Thirteen Days a surprising amount of tension and watchability for a story whose outcome we already know.
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70The players don't particularly look like their historical models, but they make us feel their life-threatening pain and puzzlement.
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60Kevin Costner is suitably flinty in 13 Days, a competent, by-the-numbers recreation of the events surrounding the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
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60Reasonably intelligent, well-crafted and dramatically understated.
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60Like President Kennedy, director Donaldson (who made "No Way Out," another pretty good Washington-seat-of-power thriller) has found a perfect balance of often-opposing forces: between recorded history and the demands of plain old entertainment.
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60This thriller is a lot better than you might expect--especially for a Kevin Costner vehicle.
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50The efficiency of his (Donaldson) direction renders the movie somewhat characterless, like a top-rank made-for-TV production.
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30This overdone project dissipates its energy in strange ways (sudden shifts to black-and-white, as though hailing the spirit of Oliver Stone and that other Costner JFK movie), and makes you wish its makers had shown the same restraint the government did during the crisis.
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100A terrifically engrossing war film in which not a single shot is fired, a movie about shaping events rather than being shaped by them.
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75Even though the actors are good, their characters stay stock.
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75Plays like a very good TV movie. Short on visual flair and starpower, Thirteen Days is not the definitive story of the Cuban missile crisis, but it's an engrossing historical lesson nonetheless.
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75It turns the nerve-fraying Cuban missile crisis into a big pop myth with the grip of a vise.
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80Keeps you hanging on every twist and turn of its wilder-than-fiction plot.
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70Greenwood gives a nuanced performance that may be the film's best work, but at times his surface dissimilarities to JFK are jarring.