Critic Reviews

13 Minutes is proof that a hero isn’t about having success against impossible odds; it’s about doing the right thing when everyone else on the planet is doing something else.

Freidel illuminates the inner struggle Elser goes through as, buttressed by his conscience and his Catholic faith, he finds within himself a strength of character and brave defiance that defines him as a hero in the truest sense of the word.

A superbly acted and strikingly evocative work, with careful attention to period detail and its many emotional beats.

13 Minutes is well-acted, with authentic settings and an involving structure, but it’s undercut somewhat by a rather flat love story.

13 Minutes is a taut, smart and straightforward bio-drama of this largely forgotten early figure in German resistance to the Hitler regime.

It’s a genuine achievement on an inexhaustible subject.

An interrogation session involving a psychotropic drug is just too weird for words and some will find the film sentimental and too naked in its Academy baiting. That said, 13 Minutes works like clockwork as an artful (if not terribly ambitious) take on a grotesque era.

Hirschbiegel and Friedel win credibility points for painting Elser as noble without painting him as a saint.

Friedel turns in a poignant performance as a man who feels that he has no choice but to act on his principles, regardless of the consequences.

This Oliver Hirschbiegel-directed German drama tells a fascinating but inevitably grim story, both more interesting and more downbeat than one might anticipate.