What a waste of my time!!!

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

As powerful and timely now as it was then and I agree it's something ALL world leaders should be required to view at least once a year! It's also much more genuine than Thirteen Days in which producer Kevin Costner inflated his role to make it appear that his character, Kenny McConnell, was closer to JFK than his own brother,the AG,Robert(the ONLY TIME nepotism worked)! Also I feel William Devane and Martin Sheen did EXCEPTIONAL jobs not only in mastering the distinctive Kennedy accent but their personalities and spirit-not to mention a slight physical resemblance(Devane including a reference to President Kennedy's physical difficulties-the use of the rocker&painfully reclining on the sofa)I saw it when it first aired and seeing it now(any advances in technology had no effect) all the performances, but especially theirs,took me right back to those heart-stopping moments! I have seen both William Devane and Martin Sheen in many other performances but I always remember this as some of their finest work! It's also a stunning reminder of how essential it is to have someone with a calm, intelligent, experienced, diplomatic mind in charge with the sole focus being not just on the protection of ALL Americans but ALL peoples of the world! This also supports the documents that were discovered decades later(Peter Jennings of ABC News did a documentary on them)regarding the last minute communication DIRECTLY between Kennedy and Khrushchev,who bypassed the "interference" of the others who favored war, and acknowledged that they BOTH wanted the same thing- PEACE for their people! Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of either current regimes of Russia or the United States! Oh it made me miss President Obama even more!

This isn't going to be everybody's favorite movie. The production values don't shoot out the lights. All the sets are indoors. There's no motion to speak of. The whole shebang seems static and talky.Yet it's an important document and in some ways well done. If much of the dialog sounds stilted it's because it was taken from official sources. So we get a lot of formal speech and very little in the way of offhand nudges. But the acting, at least in the important roles, is really pretty good. DeVane as JFK, Martin Sheen as his brother Bobby, and Howard DaSilva as Krushchev are outstanding.Most impressive is the way this film takes us back to what now seems almost like a Golden Age, despite the missile crisis and the insanity of Mutual Assured Destruction.It was a time when a president would make certain that the meetings were attended by an old Cold Warrior, Dean Acheson, even though Acheson was presumed to represent a dated point of view and was only a private citizen at the time, because the president wanted to hear all points of view during brainstorming sessions.In discussing those planning sessions, Robert MacNamara describes President Kennedy leaning towards military action in order to save face, and one of the participants saying to him, "Mister President, you're wrong." ("That took guts," says MacNamara in Errol Morris's documentary, "The Fog of War.") I was in school at the time of these events and no one knew anything except what was released to the media. If we'd known how close we were to war I believe church attendance would have soared.Many incidents and coincidences came together to get the world out of that tight spot, chief among them the reluctance of both sides to engage in war. Both Krushchev and Kennedy had a pretty good idea of how that worked. JFK had written a book about it. More than that, imagine a president who is able to muse that he recently finished reading Barbara Tuchman's history of the accidental beginning of World War I, "The Guns of August". "If I could do it, I'd send a copy to every commanding officer aboard the blockading destroyers -- not that they'd read it." The resolution of the conflict, despite missteps and mistakes on both sides, hinged on a single event. Krushchev, depressed, wrote an ameliorative letter to Kennedy, saying that he understood Kennedy's position, and that he, Krushchev was willing to dismantle the Cuban missiles in return for a guarantee that the USA would neither launch nor aid any invasion of Cuba in the future. (Using anti-Castro Cubans, we had invaded the island at the Bay of Pigs, which was a miserable failure.) At last both sides seemed to have what they wanted. The USA was getting rid of the missile threat, and the USSR was getting a guarantee of Cuba's sovereignty.Alas, under political pressure from his "war camp" at home, Krushcheve wrote a second letter, much harder in tone, reneging on earlier proposals and adding demands which the USA could not grant. Two mutually conflicting proposals a day apart. What to do? What they did was follow Robert Kennedy's suggestion. They ignored the second letter and responded only to the first. More fumbles and confusion followed but the crisis was eventually resolved with both sides compromising, but not in ways that jeopardized their own defenses.The crisis required -- and got -- deft handling at the top and cautious but effective diplomacy. That's why I used the expression "Golden Age" before.As drama, this isn't much. No villains, no fist fights, and not a gun in sight. Yet for its educational value alone, in our somewhat history-shy culture, it ought to be seen by everyone, especially now.

This is probably the best filmed analysis ever of the events of October, 1962; as both a dramatic story and filmed history, it rises far above the recent Kenvin Costner movie "Thirteen Days", which was about the same cataclysmic event.Significant in this version of the Cuban Missile Crisis is the portrayal of Nikita Khrushchev and his advisors, showing us some (though obviously not all) of the high level discussions on the Soviet side of the fence. The late Howard Da Silva is remarkably expressive as Khrushchev and Nehemiah Persoff excellent as Andrei Gromyko, his foreign minister. Other cast standouts include the late John Dehner as Dean Acheson; Martin Sheen as Robert F. Kennedy; Andrew Duggan as JCS Chairman Maxwell Taylor; Ralph Bellamy as Adlai Stevenson; and, in a performance unmatched elsewhere by anyone, William Devane as John F. Kennedy.Although anyone viewing this movie should be warned that this is docudrama and that the real history of the Cuban Missile Crisis is far more complex than even this movie shows us, it is one of, if not the, best historical recreation TV has ever given us. A definite must-see for anyone truly interested in cold-war politics.

This made for TV picture got rave reviews when it came out in 74. William Devane does a great job in his portrayal of JFK. Martin Sheen was also good as RFK. Howard Da Silva not to be overlooked as Nikita Khrushchev. When viewed today the filming technique may seem dated and dull but if that can be overlooked the content of the film is still powerful. Additionally it's all based on an actual historic event.