Don't know how I missed it before. It was recommended by a high-level intelligence official in the U.S. government. Since I was a kid when this crisis happened, I never knew the in's and out's of the situation. Extremely tense picture with the stakes clearly laid out. It gave me chills. Highly recommended.
shareI just finished watching Thirteen Days for the first time too and I concur. Happened to watch JFK (1991) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102138/ a few days ago for the first time. Was led into JFK after watching All the President's Men (1976) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074119/ about a week ago for the second time after many years. Talk about doing it back to front.
Getting back to Thirteen Days. It was interesting to hear a special talk on the Cuban missile crisis earlier in the week. Here's a link to the talk: http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2012/10/15/3610878.htm. That talk is what prompted me to rent the Thirteen Days DVD. I said to the person at the video shop that the DVD is about the Cuban missile crisis that happened 50 years ago to the day. The person had never heard of it. I said the world was on the brink of a nuclear war. The person didn't seem to care about it. The more I tried to explain the seriousness of the crisis the more they seemed to back off and want to get on with checking out DVDs. I don't know about people these days.
Anyhow, immediately before watching Thirteen Days I watched a 48 minute documentary that was on the bonus DVD called Roots of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It covered the background to the events surrounding the film. It started with the political fall-out from WWII and included a lot from a recent interview with Sergei Khrushchev, the son of Nikita Khrushchev. This unfortunately showed just how selective the material in Thirteen Days is. Nonetheless, the film conveyed dramatically the tension on President Kennedy caused by the military legacy of Eisenhower and gave a good insight to the motives of the conspiracy laid open in the JFK film.
8/10 Very Good.