When an A-list star decides to produce his next starring vehicle, critics tend to cast a skeptical eye on the finished product. Does the phrase "vanity project" ring a bell? If you saw Battlefield Earth-executive produced by and starring John Travolta-you'll know exactly what I mean.

Well, despite the wooden presence of producer-star Kevin Costner, who re-teams with director Roger Donaldson for the first time since Costner's breakthrough picture No Way Out, the fact-based historical thriller Thirteen Days belies the vanity project curse. By taking the Cuban Missile Crisis of October, 1962, and dressing it in thriller genre clothes the film manages to vividly bring back to life a frightening time when nuclear war was a lot closer than many people might now realize.

Costner plays real-life character Kenny O'Donnell, a childhood friend of John and Bobby Kennedy's, who parlayed that friendship into special advisor status in the Kennedy White House. Dressed in an ill-fitting suit and possessed of the classic Boston Brahmin accent (it's quite a shock when the first words out of Costner's mouth relate to his son's "repawt cawd"), O'Donnell serves as both hatchet man for, and conscience to, the Kennedy brothers; he's a quiet and clever man who calls 'em as he sees 'em.

Beginning with the discovery that the Russians have been building nuclear launch sites on the island of Cuba, the film goes on to chronicle the 13 tension-filled days that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. What quickly becomes apparent is that the primary sources of tension encompass not only the stalemate between the Americans and the Russians, but also a similar state of affairs between the hawks among the Joint Chiefs-who push for a strategic nuclear strike-and the dove-ish triumvirate of O'Donnell and the Kennedys, who are determined to try anything except nuclear deployment...

Canadian Bruce Greenwood (star of Atom Egoyan's Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter), unrecognizable here as JFK, wonderfully captures Kennedy's combination of vulnerability and resolve, at first playing the president as Hamlet-like in his indecision before finding the strength to resist the hawks in his inner circle. (After more or less anonymous roles in such Hollywood fodder as Rules of Engagement and Double Jeopardy, Greenwood's performance here makes me fear that we've lost another substantial talent to the Hollywood culture machine.)

As the suspense screws are slowly tightened, director Donaldson does a great job of seamlessly melding archival material from the time with a striking blend of black-and-white and colour footage, sumptuously shot by cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak. With the exception of a few repetitive scenes of the "Mr.-President-we-must-strike-now!-No!-What-are-the-other-options?" variety-instances probably dictated by the real-life chronology Donaldson is following-Thirteen Days sails along, incidentally providing political junkies with a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the internecine nature of real politik at its most frightening.

Having said all that, Thirteen Days has an irksome smugness and "rah-rah America" tone that I don't recall feeling when I first saw the classic 1974 piece The Missiles of October, starring William Devane and Martin Sheen as Kennedy the Elder and Younger, respectively. In Thirteen Days, the "communist threat to the American way of life" is illustrated by a scene where Costner goes to watch his kid's football game and genuinely laments that this is what might be lost. And the filmmakers seem to mean it! Of course one can say it's all propaganda but with propaganda this good it's not hard to see how America-thanks in large part to its cultural-imperialist point man, Hollywood-has conquered the world.