By EWAN McDONALD
(Herald rating: * * * )
For the audience who have never heard of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis either, it was the closest the world has come to a nuclear war. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev based missiles in Cuba, 150km from Florida. President John F. Kennedy told him
to move them or else.
Khrushchev sent ships with more missiles moved toward Cuba; Kennedy set up a naval blockade to stop them. The world waited for one of its superpowers to blink.
Khrushchev ordered his ships to turn back, but Kiwi director Roger Donaldson's political thriller suggests that the comrades in Moscow were not the only ones who blinked. His movie suggests America's military commanders backed down under pressure from the Kennedy White House.
The generals, according to presidential adviser Kenny O'Donnell (Kevin Costner) and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara (Dylan Baker), are just boys who want to play with their nuclear toys. They tell Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood) that he's being bushwhacked, that the generals are just looking for an excuse to scratch their itchy trigger fingers.
Be aware, if you're interested in history (in which case you wouldn't be fooled by either of the above flicks), that this owes most to the needs of moviemakers and to O'Donnell's biography, which has been criticised as a somewhat self-serving document by a man who was never more than a witness to what really went on.
* Rental video, DVD: Today
• DVD features: Historical figure commentary, biography, gallery; filmmaker's commentary; Roots of the Cuban Missile Crisis documentary; historical information; deleted scenes; Bringing History to the Silver Screen documentary; visual effect deconstruction; cast and crew filmographies.
