13 Minutes – Film Review

There are very few serious tornado movies. They either go all out with over-the-top action with storm chasers, or are low-budget melodramas. 13 Minutes sits somewhere in the middle, made to help give awareness and warnings about what to do, or not to do, in a sizeable tornado disaster. It manages to use its modest budget to great effect, focusing on the debris and carnage of disaster, rather than ambitious special effects. It is a better film as a result of what it chooses to show on and off-screen, even if I have issues with quite a lot of the main characters.

The disasters faced

Tornado, hail, electrocution, losing your hearing aid, a whole lot of racism, homophobia, and classism, and being on the receiving end of Thora Birch’s sassy comments.

The story

13 Minutes is an ensemble cast movie, and so we’ll be moving between four main family units across the course of the film as they weave in and out of each other’s lives, often without realising.

Rick and Tammy are farmers with their dopey son Luke. They thrive on cheap labour, straddling a thin line between legal and undocumented. Rick and Tammy also seem to think they are above everyone else, treating their Spanish-speaking staff as less-than, which feels a bit weird when they are introduced initially as quite likeable, if stoic and knackered people. Luke is romantically involved with one of their hires, Daniel, but knows that his parents won’t accept him being gay. Cue that showdown just moments before the tornado comes…

Ana and Carlos are family number two. Spanish-speaking and saving to buy a house, Ana signs the papers for it, whilst dealing with her horrible hotel manager boss, who undersells her wages because he knows she can’t immediately leave. Carlos is a mechanic, but takes a job with Rick and Tammy via Daniel to work on the farm, as he doesn’t know much English. When the storm hits, Ana will be at the hotel with lots of guests, whilst Carlos is on the road delivering parts for a broken tractor.

Family three is mum Jess and daughter Maddy. Maddy is pregnant, and not even the main squeeze of her boyfriend, Eric. Jess is a goth-like, sassy mechanic in the garage next to the hotel. When the twister drops down, Jess immediately takes her team into the hotel to meet with Ana and work out how to survive, whilst Maddy, already debating over whether to have the baby or not, is stuck childminding Payton, a young teen girl.

Payton is deaf and has broken her hearing aid on the day of the disaster. Her mum and dad are Kim, the town’s emergency lead, and Brad, the weatherman. What a fortunate kid to have such a dynamic duo! That doesn’t help her much when the tornado comes. Brad is on air, giving the storm warnings on TV, although she oddly doesn’t seem to comment on the fact that it’s her dad on the screen, whilst Kim is busy trying to organise the town’s response and aftercare.

As the different families interact with each other or influence decisions, the melodrama stops when the tornado hits at the 50-minute mark, and we wonder how each family will survive and reunite again.

Why its worth watching

13 Minutes has a more serious tone than most other tornado movies. The tornado is barely on screen at all, so don’t come here for in-your-face special effects. Instead, this is about noticing the sky changing and the wind picking up like a creeping tension early on. It is about seeing how different characters think about their safety and try out different methods to survive the storm. The movie tries to be quite grounded, and it is a better film for it.

That said, the characters are a motley crew, and about half of them are quite unlikable. Tammy ignores her son after the gay reveal. Luke and Daniel only seem to argue like a discount farmer version of Brokeback Hay Bale. The hotel owner does a 180 as soon as the tornado hits, but is vile until then. Most white characters are outwardly distasteful to the Spanish-speaking community, and I wasn’t rooting for many of them at all. The flipside is that all the Spanish-speaking cast are squeaky clean. This is also PG-level outside of one injury, so there aren’t the big payoffs or emotional death sequences you’d get in other disaster movies. I’d have liked at least one baddie to get some comeuppance!

Whilst not a big-budget movie, 13 Minutes makes the screen look big-budget with its use of debris. By focusing on close-up shots in the actual disaster, the money is spent on creating large, decimated debris fields for the characters to navigate through. The hotel, the farm, and Kim and Brad’s street are the big sets that are smashed up, and it looks convincing on screen. I loved the little details like Luke’s glass of water being exactly where he left it, despite there being barely any house left. It’s the kids’ toy in the tree, or the gas fire in the corner, that makes it work.

I also found 13 Minutes to be quite unique from a linguistic point of view. Half the cast speaks English, half speaks Spanish, and they often cross over. I’ve not seen a Western world disaster movie be quite so bilingual, although this sets up the class and race arguments across the film. Usually, this is an American-Asian speciality, with Chinese or Korean actors involved. I enjoyed the mix.

Lastly, with a serious film comes serious performances. Aside from a few dramatic camera pans, saved mostly for Kim’s character as she declares emergencies, this is a character drama that is blown open with a tornado. Yes, we’ll have a few screams and emotionally charged moments, but it is never overblown into complete theatrics and certainly never camp. It might mean that 13 Minutes lacks big characters (Jess comes closest), but if someone went large, it’d ruin the general vibe of the movie.

The effects

There is a mixture of subtle visual effects going on throughout the film, along with using captured sky footage from storm chasers to superimpose them into the movie’s setting. That means fork lightning is used sparsely but realistically, and the tornado moves so slowly as it’s so large, that it is closer to a matte painting than CGI. The debris sets are superb, and when the visual effects need to be hidden, an appropriate amount of grey dust and wind obscures the action. Carlos’ car setpiece, where he is upside down, has some great camera work.

The characters

Whilst many of the characters had issues, I was rooting for Ana and Carlos the whole way through. I would have happily seen Ana and Jess tackle all kinds of disasters together as they work like a buddy-cop duo. One is chirpy and action-focused, the other is a gritty, no-nonsense, sarcastic buggar. More of that if there’s a sequel, pretty please. It is also of note that this is the last film released with Anne Heche before her untimely death. In a strange coincidence, the Volcano lead actress from 1998 had also finished another tornado film called Supercell, but that came out after her passing.

Favourite quote

I had you pretty young, you know that. And I love you more than
anything in the world, but… you kinda ruined my life. You are the best…and most challenging thing that ever happened to me, but you need to know that raising a child is 24-7-365 forever,
and it is not easy.

jess gunning for mother of the year and giving sage advice to her daughter.

Three memorable moments

• Everyone getting inside the giant freezer for their survival and hearing the destruction going on outside.
• Carlos, upside down in his car, trying to free his hand
• Steve, one of the weather technicians, speaking in such a low tone from absolutely nowhere, that it made me question if we’d found the new Barry White

The obligatory weird moment

One of the side characters is a realtor who is in the hair salon where Maddy is training, and where Ana goes to sign for her house. The realtor has a young baby, and she could not care any less about it if she tried. During the tornado, she seems to forget the baby and leave it behind, and when Ana discovers the baby later, the realtor plays dead. Ana takes the baby to check it in, but the realtor is then found alive later on. For me, it’s the darkest part of the film and leaves me with so many questions as to how the realtor could pretend that the baby isn’t hers later. It’s one of many plot points that are left unresolved by the end credits. 13 Minutes has some really nasty and gritty storylines, but doesn’t scratch them fully. It prevents it from being a tour de force, but it does make it stand out.

The drinking game

Racism. Every time someone does a racism or takes advantage of the Spanish-speaking community, take a sip. Not a shot, a sip. I fear for your liver.

Conclusion

Moody, underplayed, and serious. 13 Minutes is all about what happens when you sound the alarm, and how you keep yourself safe during and after a tornado. It doesn’t spell it out for you, but by showing how the characters survive, you learn as you go. I’d have personally liked a little more bite and more resolution by the end credits, but I had an enjoyable ride. One of the better disaster movies of the last couple of years.

Rating: 3/5 – Good

If you enjoyed 13 Minutes, then you might also enjoy…

• Night of the Twisters – this low-budget 90s TV movie has a more family-friendly Sunday afternoon vibe
• Atomic Twister – same vibes, but lower budget – yet it does have Carl Lewis!
• Twister – Whilst far more storm chaser-focused and fantastical, it all takes place in remote, smaller towns, and so similar vibes and feels crop up in Cowboy Country

---