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The Story
Bruce Greenwood stars as President John F. Kennedy and Kevin Costner
stars as Kenneth O'Donnell, Special Assistant to the President, in this gripping,
white knuckle political thriller about the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
The movie takes us back to this tense and decisive period in our nation's
history (or as in my case, "experiencing it for the first time" as
it took place five years before my time), which proved to be President John F.
Kennedy's finest hour. Though the film takes its share of cinematic
liberties, it drew on various sources such as the White House tapes,
memoirs, interviews, and de-classified CIA documents and photos to ensure a
certain level of historical accuracy. And in case you wonder if
certain things really happened as portrayed in the movie, the infinifilm
feature offers clarification to some of those questions. More on that in a
second.
The movie offers us an invaluable first-hand experience of what
it was like for President John F. Kennedy, his staff, and the Joint Chiefs
of Staff during what could have been a nuclear catastrophe for
mankind. Things were so bleak, that the President's closest advisor
tells his wife the following upon returning home after days of working in the
White House:
"If the sun comes up tomorrow, it is only because of
men of good will.
And that's all there is between us and the devil."
- Kenneth O'Donnell speaking to his wife
The acting performances are rock solid and dead on. This stellar cast makes you believe that you're re-living the
Cuban Missile Crisis. The integration of real-world historical footage
and special effects were well done and further enhances what is already a
compelling movie experience. You know what they say, some of the best stories
are based on real-life events. And "Thirteen Days" is all
that and more. The "nostalgic heroism" portrayed in the film
is inspiring. It brings back hope for the goodness we find in people and
international peace, and renews my confidence in our world leaders.
The Extras
As the first of New Line's premium infinifilm DVD series,
"Thirteen Days" delivers as promised and sets the bar high for
value-added material and an innovative approach to providing an immersive educational/entertainment experience. New Line describes their new
infinifilm DVD series as:
"An infinifilm lets you explore aspects of the making
of the movie and
then takes you beyond the movie to features relevant to the film.
An infinifilm is an exciting and innovative exploration
of the ideas and aspects of a movie."
Here's how infinifilm works:
First, watch the movie as you would with any DVD. There is nothing new
about this part. Then, you can do either of the following.
The first option: You can activate the
infinifilm playback mode, by selecting "infinifilm", then "Play infinifilm" in
the DVD menu. In this mode, the movie
plays as before (in full Dolby
Digital 5.1 if that's the soundtrack you had selected), but this time,
navigation menus will occasionally pop up from the bottom of the screen (see
picture of a sample screen shot below), allowing you to select and view any
of the relevant bonus features. Should you choose one, the DVD
playback will branch to that featurette and play the featurette in its
entirety (though featurettes are generally short, and their run time are
indicated in the "minutes:seconds" pop-up menu). In the
example screen shot below (click on the image for a larger
view), there are two relevant featurettes for this sequence. The
"Learn about the Philippines as Cuba" featurette (with a run time
of 19 seconds) is highlighted in yellow. If you press
"enter" on your DVD player remote, you'll get to view that
featurette. When the featurette is done, DVD playback resumes with the
movie, exactly where you had left off before viewing the featurette.
Ah, the beauty of DVD's seamless branching feature...
An example of the infinifilm™ pop-up navigation menu
copyright © New Line Home
Entertainment - all rights reserved
(click on image to enlarge)
Basically, that's what the infinifilm mode is all
about. It provides a new level of viewing interactivity, where you
(the viewer) are presented with a menu of relevant featurettes in the
context of watching the feature film. At that moment, you can choose
depending on your interest, whether to branch to the featurette(s) or just
continue watching the film. The featurettes could be just about
anything: deleted scenes, extended scenes, brief featurettes that provide
additional background historical information or just some behind-the-scenes,
the making-of, or special effects type of information.
The second option: You can go a là
carte mode, as you normally would for any DVD with bonus features.
Simply select "infinifilm", then "infinifilm Features"
in the DVD menu, and
then pick among the many bonus featurettes that you want to view.
So basically, there's a bunch of value-added
featurettes. You can watch the film in infinifilm mode and have the
pop-up menus tell you about relevant-to-the-scene bonus materials, or you
can randomly access any featurette through the "infinifilm
Features" menu selection.
Here's a description of the bonus features on this
infinifilm DVD:
To further distinguish their infinifilm series, New Line
is packaging these titles in a keep case, the packaging that many other studios
use. But for New Line, which is a subsidiary of Time Warner (as in
Warner Home Entertainment), this is considered a radical departure from their usual
snap case, which seems to be the standard for all New Line and Warner
DVD titles.
In summary, there is so much value-added educational and informative
material here, their value alone almost justify the purchase of this DVD.
Video & Audio
The image quality of this anamorphic
widescreen DVD is excellent. The colors are accurate and
saturated, while shadow detail is very good. The video
transfer is top notch and pays tribute to the beautiful
cinematography. The Dolby
Digital 5.1 soundtrack is well balanced and the surround channels are
used effectively. The dialog
is crystal clear.
Conclusion
"Thirteen Days" is quite an educational
film. The fact that it is a top-notch, intense, and entertaining
political thriller makes it that much better. As the first of New
Line's new infinifilm DVD series, we're pretty impressed. New Line has
raised the bar further for value-added bonus material and pioneered an
exciting immersive technique. Their innovative approach of the
pop-up navigation menus to provide historical and other relevant featurettes
works perfectly for this film. Nice going New Line! I am giving it my
emphatic nod of approval.
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United We Stand
