Movie Review: Thirteen Days

While Mr. Stewart(and some students) love to make random X-Men First Class references regarding the Cuban Missile crisis, there are in fact movies out there that actually have some accurate historical context concerning this topic. The other weekend, I watched the movie Thirteen Days with my dad and we were taken aback by how well this film depicted the Cuban Missile Crisis from the American point of view. Just to recap, the Cuban Missile Crisis was when the Americans found out that the Soviets were installing missiles within the newly communist Cuban island. This made President Kennedy uneasy, because the missiles could potentially hit any major US city(besides Seattle) in a matter of minutes. He ends up taking a "quarantine" approach, basically a blockade, to pressure the Soviets into removing the missiles. While the missiles were eventually taken back to the Soviet Union, the US also agreed in secret to remove their own nuclear warheads from Turkey. 

Even though I watched the movie before we talked about the crisis in class, it was extremely easy to follow and didn't have a lot of scenes distracting from the actual event. At some points however it because slightly comical because of the film maker's actor choice. While in class, I recognized some of the footage in the documentary we were watching, because it had been recreated in the movie. Overall, I would suggest watching Thirteen Days, as it may enhance your overall understanding of the Cuban Missile Crisis:)