In Theaters

“THIRTEEN DAYS” 145 minutes, PG-13, directed by Roger Donaldson, written by David Self.

Roger Donaldson’s “Thirteen Days,” the smart, provocative – if slightly revisionist – re-creation of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, has a worrisome beginning. It’s not because of any Russian missiles aimed at U.S. shores, but because of Kevin Costner’s jarring Boston brogue, which is so thick and difficult to listen to, it initially seems as if the movie will be destroyed by it.

It isn’t. In fact, the good news here is that “Thirteen Days” is so well-written, acted and involving, the heavy-handed accents of its three major players – Kenny O’Donnell (Costner), John F. Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood) and Bobby Kennedy (Steven Culp) – eventually pack less and less of a distracting punch as the drama unfolds.

The film, from a screenplay by David Self, is based on historical fact, but since it isn’t a documentary, liberties have been taken to re-create a crisis that nearly left millions dead from nuclear war. Though the outcome is known going into the film, it is to Donaldson’s great credit that he’s nevertheless able to build unflagging tension in what could have been 21/2 hours of tedium.

What he and Self envision isn’t just a possible war fought against Russia, but a very real war fought within the White House.

The best scenes in “Thirteen Days” revolve around Kennedy’s ongoing fight to keep his advisers – particularly Gen. Curtis LeMay (Kevin Conway), Gen. Maxwell Taylor (Bill Smitrovich) and Dean Acheson (Len Cariou), each of whom is desperate to save face after the botched Bay of Pigs – from undermining him at every turn and thus sending the United States into a war that could be avoided with skill and patience.

For guidance, Kennedy consistently turns to his hotheaded brother Bobby and to the slightly cooler O’Donnell, a man who may have been one of Kennedy’s closest aids, but who, history reminds us, never had the role of importance he’s given here.

Without question, the decision to beef up O’Donnell’s influence over JFK will bother some political and historical purists, so it’s important to emphasize where “Thirteen Days” is coming from. It’s not so much interested in presenting 145 minutes of nonstop fact, even though its core is steeped in it. Instead, mirroring Oliver Stone’s “Nixon” and “JFK,” not to mention the 1974 television movie based on the crisis, “The Missiles of October,” it’s more interested in capturing the myth born out of a tumultuous time.

The result is fantastic. It’s a stirring, often thrilling film that sees the big picture while reasonably imagining the drama that took place behind Washington’s closed doors.

As O’Donnell, Costner eventually tempers his accent to deliver a fine performance, but what’s more impressive about him is how willing he is to share the screen with the film’s two other stars, Greenwood and Culp. As Bobby Kennedy, Culp is strong, but it’s Greenwood’s performance as JFK that steals the show and gives the film its enormous power. Throughout, he strikes the perfect balance of strength and vulnerability as the United States looked nuclear war straight in the eye.

Grade: A-

On video and DVD

“BAIT” 110 minutes, R, directed by Antoine Fuqua, written by Tony Gilroy, Andrew Scheinman and Adam Scheinman.

Sometimes, just describing a film’s premise will hang it out to dry, which is precisely the case with Antoine Fuqua’s “Bait,” a film that has one of the most preposterous premises going.

In the film, Jamie Foxx is Alvin Sanders, a jovial, small-time crook who opens the film with his brilliant plan to steal shrimp from a restaurant warehouse. Check that – he wants to steal prawns, which, audiences are told time and again in the film’s desperate attempt to drum up humor, are large shrimp, big shrimp – “like the kind you get in shrimp cocktail.”

Naturally, Alvin gets caught and is put in a holding cell with professional criminal John Jaster (Robert Pastorelli), a worried-looking man with a heart problem who’s been placed in the slammer for his part in stealing $42 million in gold from the Federal Reserve. He did this with an accomplice, the brilliant psychopath Bristol (Doug Hutchinson), on the same night Alvin was stealing prawns – which, just in case you didn’t quite grasp it the first dozen times, are large shrimp, big shrimp, two of which “could make a meal!”

When Jaster suddenly drops dead during a fierce interrogation, Clenteen (David Morse), a nasty U.S. Treasury investigator who probably doesn’t like prawns, believes Jaster may have shared with Alvin the secret of where he hid the gold.

Thus begins the film’s elaborate plot to secretly fit Alvin with a tracking device in his jaw (I’m not kidding), which, the investigators hope, will lead them not only to the gold, but also to Bristol – a man who, for some reason, sounds exactly like John Malkovich.

Predictably, this ludicrous setup makes for a ludicrous film – one that’s stretched to its limits to balance its forced moments of comedy with reels of dull action.

Everyone here is more talented than the material – Foxx shined on the television series “In Living Color” and Oliver Stone’s “Any Given Sunday,” and Morse was good in “The Green Mile” and “Contact.” But Fuqua, working from a screenplay by Tony Gilroy, Andrew Scheinman and Adam Scheinman, squanders their talent with a stupid film that feels as if it were written with the help of monkeys – not to mention a thesaurus.

Indeed, Morse is asked to be so arch and pretentious in so many scenes, one wonders why “Bait” staked so much of its plot on shrimp – excuse me, prawns – and not on something more substantial and impressive, such as fish heads.

Grade: F

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews are published Mondays in Style and Thursdays in the scene.

The Video Corner

Renting a video? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores.

Bait F

Battlefield Earth F-

Coyote Ugly C-

Disney’s The Kid B+

Me, Myself & Irene C+

Autumn in New York F

Hollow Man C-

The Art of War F

The Exorcist A

Godzilla 2000 B+

The Cell B

Road Trip D-

Saving Grace A-

Where the Money Is C+

The Virgin Suicides B+

Loser C-

The Road to El Dorado B-

Shower B+

Scary Movie B-

Shaft B+

Gone in 60 Seconds D

Groove B-

Nutty Professor II C+

Trixie D+

The In Crowd F+

The Replacements D

Chicken Run A

Gladiator B-

X-Men C

Big Momma’s House B

Boys and Girls C-

Fantasia 2000 A-

The Perfect Storm A

Pokemon: The Movie 2000 D+

Mission: Impossible 2 B+

Titan A.E. B-

Frequency B

Return to Me B+

Center Stage D+

The Patriot B+

Toy Story 2 A

Keeping the Faith B+

Rules of Engagement C-

Shanghai Noon C

Pitch Black B+

East-West A-

The Skulls D-