In Lindsay Gossling’s catastrophe thriller, a huge tornado threatens the people of a tiny Oklahoma town. Disaster films used to be entertaining. They were full of older movie stars, many of whom were desperate for a commercial smash, doing things like flying broken planes, desperately attempting to rescue earthquake victims, diving underwater on an upside-down ocean liner, and jumping from flaming buildings back in the 1970s.
13 Minutes, directed by Lindsay Gossling, offers a unique approach to the venerable genre. The film follows the standard disaster movie formula to focus on a variety of hot-button societal topics, and there are a lot of them. The individuals deal with issues including illegal immigration, closeted homosexuality, abortion rights, religious intolerance, access to health care, and physical impairment before and after a monster storm wreaks havoc on a tiny Oklahoma community. It’s over an hour into the proceedings that the tornado finally appears, and it’s a welcome respite.
Because this is a low-budget picture, it lacks modern movie star equivalents like Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Gene Hackman, or Charlton Heston. Paz Vega, Amy Smart, Thora Birch, Yancey Arias, Sofia Vassilieva, Anne Heche, Laura Spencer, Trace Adkins, and Peter Facinelli make up the ensemble, all of whom perform fine work but lack the star wattage to make us care whether their characters survive or die.
The third group of characters in this film are more typical of the genre: an emergency manager, Kim (Smart), who is tracking the storm, and her television meteorologist husband, Brad (Facinelli). The couple has a small girl who can’t hear or talk (Shaylee Mansfield, who is deaf in real life and has a very natural screen presence) and who, unsurprisingly, is put in grave danger when the storm strikes.
13 Minutes is well-intentioned in its investigation of societal concerns in the American heartland, which, aside from religious and opioid-themed dramas, receives far less attention on the big screen than it deserves. However, neither sensitive, character-driven drama viewers nor disaster movie enthusiasts will be satisfied by this attempt, since the latter will be dissatisfied by the absence of visual mayhem.
