Finding great success with 2004’s Downfall and horrific failure with 2013’s Diana, director Oliver Hirschbiegel reverts back to World War II with 13 Minutes. The focus is on Georg Elser, the real-life German assassin whose attempt to bomb Hitler failed. Interestingly, the film opens with Elser’s failure, kicking off a story more interested in the gruelling Nazi interrogation process after his capture and the events in his life that inspired the MO.
You can’t deny Hirschbiegel’s outstanding ability to reconstruct the look of Germany in that era. Where Downfall depicted Berlin at the very end of the war, the flashback sequences of 13 Minutes span numerous years, superbly showing the country’s transition into Nazi occupation – albeit in a small-town setting.
While these select moments in Elser’s life do add a significant understanding to his eventual act, they mostly sit in the background of a vanilla love story involving a married woman and her drunk abusive husband. This subplot itself isn’t bad, per se, but when it’s given as much focus as a captivating crime drama, it’s like putting a taco next to a sirloin and presenting them both as the main course. One underwhelms simply by comparison.
The compliment to my backhand goes to the sirloin side of 13 Minutes, the post-bombing scenario which is expertly handled. Though scenes of torture feel tense and real, it’s the reasons behind the interrogation that fascinate. Elser acted on his own freewill, not as a pawn for a rebellious faction. The Nazis couldn’t accept such a claim, and it’s satisfying as hell to see them grow paranoid over this mysterious faction that never existed.
