A feature film made in 2000, Thirteen Days, is deservedly popular. It is a tense and exciting thriller in which a heroic group of men save the world from destruction by preventing a nuclear war. But, unlike so many other thrillers with broadly similar plots, this film is about actual events and real historical characters. In case you haven’t seen it, it is about the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962.
The film begins with the discovery by U-2 reconnaissance aircraft of Soviet nuclear missile sites under construction on the island of Cuba. Standing up both to the aggressive provocation of the Soviets and to pressure from military chiefs of staff to invade Cuba, or at least to bomb the missile sites, President John F. Kennedy, assisted by his brother Robert Kennedy and special adviser Kenny O’Donnell, secured the dismantling of the sites without provoking a catastrophic war.
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