The Missiles of October

I find this movie now on DVD one of the most compelling works of art it has ever been my pleasure to behold. This movie is from the less is more school. No high tech camera angles and silly special effects get in your way here. No stupid insipid love story tangles its way through the plot where some couple must give you today's obligatory R Rated steamy love scene at some point when you just wished the action would go on. This movie is just cold hearts, raw nerves, hardened steal will's of both sides exposed in abundance as the world of the early 1960's creeped toward thermonuclear oblivion in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Brinksmanship and a world tittering on the brink of a testosterone cliff a fall from which guranteed no return to life as it existed before is what this movie was about. Missiles of October is told in a play format. The sets are obviously sets so you do not waste your time on the decorations of the people or the places. You simply are given a reference of where you are by the set. The real action is the dialogue the intrique in the tangled the goings on. This movie works on a level of raw emotion. The missiles of October is a movie stripped bare of the heavy syrup and confectionary sugar laden movies of today. The Missiles of October does not spoon feed the audience each moment of their movie experience till only one rather inexcapable formulalic conclusion offered by the screen writer can be reached.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a series of mis-steps wrong judgement calls and finally at the 11th hour some common sense where. In this movie both sides The Soviet Union and the United States had to get off their high horses and admit we together do not want to end human kinds existence as a species on this earth and take almost every other living thing with us as we exit. The fact that the set's look deliberately cheesy and the acting is done as a play just makes the truly superior acting stand out and grab you all that much more. Oh to say I was pleased with The Missiles of October is to dabble in understatement up past your neck for I in all ways loved it such that I can not be without two copies of this in my home. One to watch and one to keep in a safe fire resistant place. The Missile's of October blew me away because it is true, this happened in real life. I was just a baby at the time but I lived through this time. This movie in play format is awesome because the acting was first rate and people this was high drama life or death stakes would have affected all of us had it gone wrong because it was all real life baby and no movie gets any better than that in my humble opinion.

Oh and its like way educational too so buy this one its one of the WOLF's major must haves like number one on my serious subjects list.

The Title 'The Missiles Of October' was a play on the title of the book 'The Guns Of August' by Barbara Wertheim Tuchman which deals with the precipitant events leading to World War I and the enormous tragedy resulting from the inability of the principal player's to diplomatically side-step one of history's most tragic chapters. I was a child at the time of the Cuban missile crisis but I remember clearly the dread we all felt during those tension filled days when literally the fate of the world was hanging in the balance.

'The Missiles Of October' was a Hallmark Hall Of Fame special presentation and was based on Theodore Sorensen's book 'Kennedy' [the chapter entitled 'The Cuban Missile Crisis']. The TV production captured perfectly the story as told by Sorensen, who was part of Kennedy's staff at the time and was present at most of the meetings taking place prior, and subsequent to Kennedy's revelation to the world of America's knowledge of the Russian missiles in Cuba and our intent to have them removed.

I HIGHLY recommend this film as one of the most riveting stories you will ever see ... fascinating, mesmerizing, haunting, and would have made great fiction if it were not ABSOLUTELY TRUE.

Hallmark Hall of Fame had many fine presentations, and the Missiles of October was one. It's the story of the Cuban missile crisis. There is a more modern film depicting the same time, Thirteen Days, which is also excellent, and had the advantage of the actual transcripts, which were released in the '80s. Back to that later. The Missiles of October goes into much details about not only both sides, but the negotiations.

The Missiles of October starred William Devane as JFK, Martin Sheen as RFK, Ralph Bellamy as Adlai Stevenson, Howard da Silva as Khrushchev, John Dehner as Dean Acheson, along with other character actors of the time - Dana Elcar, James T. Callahan, Peter Donat, Michael Lerner, and Andrew Duggan.

I will admit that after the first scene, which was so stilted, with everybody sounding as if they were giving a speech, I was prepared to hate this movie. After that, the film changed considerably as we got to see more of Kennedy. The film is carried beautifully by William Devane's brilliant performance as JFK. He really is the man - charming, with a sense of humor, tough, thoughtful, and demanding when he needs to be.

The first thing that's obvious, as it was obvious in Thirteen Days, was that the joint chiefs hated Kennedy, thought he was too young to be President, and wanted to bomb the hell out of Cuba and thought he was idiot for not approving it. There was a criticism of Thirteen Days that Kennedy "seemed to lean heavily on his advisors." Yeah. And why not? If I were going to start World War III, I'd get some advice too. Kennedy was very, very careful - he did not want to bomb Cuba and start a war.

The film shows the tension as negotiations fail, ships run the barricade, an airman is shot down -- it was less tense for me as someone who lived through it, but if you didn't, it is very suspenseful and scary.

Everyone was good, and I nearly fainted when Michael Lerner walked in as Pierre Salinger - boy, did they get the casting perfect on that one! Martin Sheen was a little problematic for me. First of all, when a person ages, his or her voice drops, so to hear this higher voice coming out of Sheen was jarring, plus I felt his accent was just a touch too much. The camaraderie between JFK and RFK was expertly shown.

I would recommend both films. William Devane remains today one of our finest actors, perhaps underrated because he had a minimal film career. The Missiles of October made his reputation, and rightly so. A performance that needs to be seen.

One more thing. I looked up when the transcripts were released, and the article said that they were released over time "because it takes 100 hours to transcribe one hour of tape." I was a transcriber for 35 years. It takes 3-4 hours if you're transcribing a lot of people talking. Don't know where 100 hours comes from. Obviously in the case of something so important, someone would have to listen to the tapes to proofread the transcript, but that would take only one hour. Oh well.

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 is the best docudrama, and quite possibly the best drama, ever made. Forget the blatant revisionism of the Kennedies that's come in vogue, The Missilies of October is the real story of how Jack Kennedy and Nikita Khruschev faced down their generals and conservative wings and pulled the world back from the brink of Armageddon.

Just before the missile crisis breaks, Kennedy read The Guns of October – an historical work about how the great powers simply stumbled into World War I. It wasn't inevitable; it could have been avoided, but no country would give another room to back down without appearing to capitulate.

Bobby Kennedy plays the whip to bring the powerful and contentious men who make up JFK's cabinet, political allies and military leadership into an uneasy consensus around a blockade of Cuba, instead of an invasion. JFK gives Khruschev room to maneuver at every turn, and Khruschev is smart enough to see these openings and take them. Neither side gets what it wants; both sides get what they can live with.

Ralph Bellamy, Nehemiah Persoff, John Dehner, Andrew Duggan, Peter Donat, Dana Elcar, Stewart Moss, Harris Yulin and more give excellent performances. William DeVane as JFK, Martin Sheen as RFK and Howard DaSilva as Khruschev are absolutely brilliant. The script and direction are equal to the fine performances of the cast.

Watch this movie and ponder where we'd be if the Bush cabinet had learned these lessons before they started playing power politics.