Mark Reviews Movies: 13 MINUTES (2021)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 28, 2021

Director Lindsay Gossling's screenplay for 13 Minutes follows the typical disaster movie formula. We meet a group of characters, going about their everyday lives, and some, of course, are worried about and prepared for the destruction about to occur. When disaster strikes, all of them have to confront it and deal with the aftermath.

Gossling's offering, set in a fictional town in Oklahoma, is slightly different, in that the majority of the movie is about the characters' routines and drama. The monstrous tornado that eventually strikes the town is only a brief interruption to those matters. Then, with a lot of search-and-rescue and triage scenes, the story simply ends, offering little to no resolution to all of the problems and conflicts Gossling spent so much time establishing.

This, one imagines, is the filmmaker's point—that, while a disaster may cause physical ruin, the foundation of any person's life hasn't really changed. Certain characters here are still helpful and compassionate, and others aren't. The storm doesn't alter people, so much as it brings the true nature of their characters into focus.

The idea is sound. The execution is a long, meandering drag.

There are a lot of characters here, from a family of farmers, to some undocumented immigrants who work on the farm, to the mother of a pregnant teenager, and to a married couple who specifically work with the weather, as well as their daughter who is hearing impaired. They're played by the likes of Anne Heche, Trace Adkins, Thora Birch, Amy Smart, Paz Vega, and many others who aren't as recognizable, and the characters' lives connect in various ways.

Heche's farmer's wife, for example, works at a Christian pregnancy clinic, where the teen girl, named Maddy and played by Sofia Vassilieva, gets some biased advice about what to do about her pregnancy. Vega's motel worker Ana is engaged to Carlos (Yancey Arias), who has come from Mexico to work on the farm, and the farmers' son (played by Will Peltz) is secretly gay and in love with one of migrant workers. Kim (Smart), an emergency response manager for the county, and Brad (Peter Facinelli), a meteorologist on the local news network, are the parents of Peyton (Shaylee Masnfield), the hearing-impaired girl who's being babysat by Maddy, who is in turn distracted by her cad of a boyfriend (played by James Austin Kerr), when the tornado arrives.

There are many more connections, such as how Maddy's mother Jess (Birch) works at a local auto shop next to the motel, and they're all, to one degree or another, shallow and inconsistent. Gossling's script takes some time with the relationship between Jess and Maddy, as they frankly discuss the ramifications of the girl having a baby, but just about every other relationship and potential conflict here is delayed until and/or stopped short by the storm's arrival. The farmer's son, for example, announces he's gay to his parents, moments before the entire farm has to take shelter.

Some of these stories and characters only seem to matter in terms of the storm. While Carlos is stuck in a pickup truck in the middle of the tornado, Ana tries to get everyone in the motel to a safe place. Kim and Brad are left to worry about Peyton (who forgets everything she has been taught about tornado safety, just so Gossling can get an intimidating shot of the funnel cloud), and whatever Maddy may or may not have learned about her situation from protecting a child is left to our imagination.

The limited visual and practical effects used to re-create the massive tornado and its destruction are sometimes impressive, but since the storm is meant as more a plot device or metaphor, Gossling doesn't spend too much time with and in it. Most of its impact comes from the aftermath, as characters scramble to find loved ones, help strangers, and maybe resolve one or two of the various interpersonal conflicts and personal dilemmas set up earlier. Again, the goal of seeing these people come together in a crisis is admirable, but the scope of it is so restricted (Kim's team amounts to herself and two other people) that the venture feels anticlimactic.

There isn't any payoff to 13 Minutes, in terms of either spectacle or drama. That might be the point, but if it is, that aim runs counter to the core of what most of this movie does for most of its story.

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