13 Minutes is a 2021 American independent disaster film directed, written and produced by Lindsay Gossling and starring Amy Smart, Anne Heche, Peter Facinelli, Paz Vega, Yancey Arias and Trace Adkins. The film was released on October 29, 2021.
The film follows the lives of four families living in the fictional Oklahoma town of Minninnewah. Local television meteorologist Brad (Facinelli) and emergency manager Kim (Smart) are tasked with warning the public about an impending outbreak of damaging tornadoes expected to hit the state that day; they leave their hearing-impaired daughter Peyton (Shaylee Mansfield) under the care of 19-year-old hairdresser Maddy (Sofia Vassilieva), whose mother, Jess (Birch), gave birth to her as a teenager and who discovers she is pregnant through an affair with Eric (Gabriel Jarret). Luke (Will Peltz), who helps run a family farm, struggles to come out to his religious, ultra-conservative parents, Rick (Adkins) and Tammy (Heche), impeding his budding relationship with Daniel (Davi Santos), one of the farmhands; Ana (Vega), the head of housekeeping at a local motel and Daniel's mother, tries to forge a new life together with Carlos (Arias), an undocumented immigrant who Daniel hires to work on Luke's family farm.
Their intersecting stories take place preceding a massive tornado that wipes out the town, leaving death and destruction in its wake, and the townspeople fighting to survive and help others in the aftermath.
Not to be confused with the 2015 World War II-era historical drama film.
13 Minutes provides examples of:
- Artistic License: Closed Captioning: The design of the closed captions on the Jones' TV set (shown when Peyton is watching a cartoonnote and coverage of the tornado event) is shown as a single-line black bar stretched across the lower part of the screen, and then later as a black box with three lines of text. Caption backgrounds usually are confined to the area of each line of text, often positioned in the area where the person/character speaking at a particular moment is in frame, and can extend to three (sometimes four vertical lines) depending on the length of the sentence; "pop-up" (or pre-prepared) captions are usually used on pre-recorded programs, while "paint-on" captions (i.e., "real-time" captions, usually—except for recorded programs, where captions prepared in that style are timed to match when speech and other sounds occur—carrying a several-second delay between the spoken words and the on-air transcription) are often used during live programs, like severe weather coverage Maddy and Peyton are seen watching later (where the "paint-on" variety is used here).
- A Storm Is Coming: Done often with weather reports foreshadowing the tornado, and then when the storm hits Minninnewah immediately before the actual tornado hits any of the characters, particularly the pounding hail Ana and the other hotel guests and staffers and the employees at the auto repair shop experience.
- Bittersweet Ending: Much of Minninnewah has been completely destroyed, although the exact number of casualties isn't stated. None of the main characters caught in the tornado die, though Maddy and Rick are both badly injured (it isn't explicitly stated whether Maddy's unborn child survived or, considering he was near death at the time Luke and Tammy found him, if Rick survived his injuries). Carlos (due to Ana signing off on having him taken to emergency care, despite the risk related to his undocumented status) is all but certain to be deported, although Ana assures him they will be together again when he is sent to his home country, and Luke is disowned by his parents after coming out, leaving Daniel as the only one he has left while opening the prospect their relationship can develop further.
- Closet Gay: Luke. He hides his relationship with Ana's son, Daniel, because he fears being shunned by his religious, ultra-conservative, hetero-normative crusader parents Rick and Tammy. As feared, when he comes out to his parents, they don't accept him, even refusing to shelter with him, Daniel and the other farmhands when the tornado hits.note Tammy even refuses to let him in the ambulance taking Rick (who, unable to deal with his son's news, gets caught in the tornado on an ATV) to the hospital, disowning him in front of an EMT asking about his relation to them, after he helped save Rick's life! Having finally accepted his sexuality, Luke has Daniel left to rely on and it's implied they'll develop their relationship further.
- Developing Doomed Characters: For 55 minutes. And then the tornado hits.
- Disaster Movie: Seemingly what would happen if Irwin Allen developed one around hot-button social issues.
- Do Not Touch the Funnel Cloud: Mostly averted. Peyton sees the tornado from a safe enough distance that Maddy is able to grab her and get them both inside the former's house, although while some smaller pieces of debris can be seen flying as that happens, the tornado strikes the house in a timeframe seemingly too short for them to have gotten in and at least avoided being sucked up. Carlos gets hit by the tornado while sheltering in an underpass, not realizing it was heading his way; here, it does seem like he encounters the tornado funnel without being hit by the outer winds, given the sudden nature in which his truck is flipped by it.
- Extremely Short Timespan: The entire movie takes place in one day, with the first half taking place in the lead-up to the tornadic storm, and the last half taking place during the aftermath.
- Fight to Survive: The characters are left struggling to stay alive after the tornado strikes, and several come to the rescue of the victims. Jess, Tammy, Luke and Kim have the harrowing experience of having to help rescue their own family members.
- Foreshadowing: Several times before the storms form, radio reports forecasting the impending tornado outbreak can be heard. Most of the characters go on about their day while they're being broadcast. It's only when the tornado warning is issued that anyone takes notice.
- Four Lines, All Waiting: There are multiple plots with little intersection, outside of the characters knowing one another to varying degrees, throughout the movie. Most of them — save for Brad, Kim and Peyton's — deal with social issues of some kind (Maddy considering whether to have an abortion, Luke coming to terms with being gay while facing rejection from his socially conservative parents, and Carlos trying to make a life in America with Ana and Daniel while under threat of deportation due to being undocumented).
- Generation Xerox: Jess had Maddy when she was in her late teens; 19-year-old Maddy discovers she's pregnant through an affair with a married man, and questions whether she should keep the baby. When Maddy confesses this to Jess, her mom recalls being conflicted in the same way but ultimately doesn't regret having her, affectionately referring to Maddy as her "masterpiece."
- Impairment Shot: Audio version. Two scenes in the movie cut the audio to demonstrate how Peyton experiences the world without her hearing aid. The first occurs when her cochlear implant's external device is broken after running into a boy playing football on the playground. The second is the tensest scene, as the TV signal cuts out as she watches her dad Brad's coverage of the storm, and she goes outside to watch in awe as the foreboding large tornado approaches her neighborhood; the silence suddenly becomes a low rumbling noise, before the full roar of the wedge tornado is heard when we see it as Peyton looks on.
- Left Hanging:
- When we last see Maddy, she and Jess are in the ambulance, about to take Maddy to the hospital; however, it's never explained whether her unborn baby even survived given the severity of Maddy's injuries.
- It's also not explained whether Rick survived his injuries, either. He's also seen being transported to the hospital, after Tammy denies Luke permission to go with them there.
- No Communities Were Harmed: The film features references to both real-life and fictional Oklahoma towns and counties. As illustrated by the radar images shown during the scenes in which Brad is covering the storm on TV (which otherwise show real-life municipalities including the state capital of Oklahoma City), Minninnewah and Ethel County, where the town is located, are more or less fictionalized stand-ins for El Reno and Canadian County, Oklahoma, respectively, which have had their own experiences with damaging tornadoes throughout their histories.note
- Nobody Can Die: All of the main characters survive the tornado, however Maddy and Rick are critically injured. A woman whose baby is unharmed, both of whom are found by Ana in the rubble of one home, is also seriously injured and taken to the hospital unconscious when Ana flags down an ambulance.
- No Full Name Given: Most of the named characters are only referred to by their first name (Maddy, Carlos, etc.). The only ones to have a surname are Ana (Gomez, presumably also Daniel's last name), and Kim, Brad and Peyton (Jones).
- No One Should Survive That!: Eric says this about Maddy upon seeing her in the ambulance; Jess immediately questions how he could make that assessment. To be fair, Maddy was so badly injured—having been directly buried under a ton of debris—it's miraculous she didn't die, not to mention that a tree trunk fell right next to her that she could've been crushed by had it fell a few inches in the other direction. In fact, she was the only one in the Jones' home who was seriously hurt: neither Eric nor Peyton were injured, despite the former sheltering in an above-ground bathtub with only a blanket protecting him from an EF4–EF5 tornado, and the latter being trapped in a debris-created crawlspace (and narrowly avoiding electrocution when Kim pushes live electrical wires away from a puddle Peyton was approaching while crawling towards her mom, unaware that Peyton couldn't fully hear her).
- Pinned to the Wall: One of Carlos' hands winds up puncturing his truck's roof after the vehicle gets overturned by the tornado, resulting in him having to cut around it with a switchblade to free himself; cue the close-up of his very badly bloodied hand as Carlos pulls it out of the roof hole.
- Precision F-Strike and Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Given by Jess, when calling out one of her fellow employees (likely her boss) at the auto repair shop when he pats her butt:note Jess: "Dirty. Mitts. Off. Seriously if I have to say it again, I will quit. No fuckin' joke."
- Relationship-Salvaging Disaster: Subverted for Luke. His parents basically disown him for being gay, and him helping revive his own father, who nearly got himself killed while riding his ATV while the twister hit (it's not clear whether this was intentional out of shame or pure recklessness), doesn't change anything. On the other hand, since he is now open about his sexuality, he and Daniel — the only person he has left — can be together.
- Scenery Gorn: The homes and businesses in Minninnewah that were hit by the tornado (although the tornado's intensity is never specified, the damage appears consistent with either a high-end EF4 or an EF5).
- Shown Their Work: The film features a good deal of tornado safety tips (such as those printed on the cards and placards Ana places throughout the motel while working) and informative tidbits about tornado alerts.note It's also one of the only disaster films to feature an accurate depiction of a tornadic supercell's cloud structure, as most show the tornado forming from a generically almost flat cloud base rather than from the wall cloud (the cloud formation extending from the main cloud base that contains the low-level rotation once the mesocyclone reaches near the surface).
- Suddenly Speaking: Peyton, who otherwise speaks using sign language, does this twice. As the Jones home is being demolished by the tornado, she can be heard calling out to Maddy as the latter struggles to reach out to her. Later, when Peyton sees her mother Kim walk by the crawlspace she's trapped under, she repeatedly cries out to Kim ("Mama!"), getting her attention and leading to Peyton's rescue.
- Surprise Pregnancy: Maddy—whose mother, Jess, gave birth to her close to the same age (19)—discovers she's pregnant by Eric, and is unsure whether she can take care of a child of her own. She gets Eric to take her to what she thought was an abortion clinic, only to find out it's a crisis pregnancy center,note when Luke's mother, Tammy, tries to pressure Maddy into keeping the baby in the middle of an ultrasound. Maddy later finds out that Eric is already married with two kids, and doesn't want to be involved with the baby because of the financial constraints taking care of three children. The storyline is basically left unresolved, as it's never explained whether Maddy's unborn baby survived after she is seriously injured by the tornado.
- Terminology Title and Time Title: The film's title, 13 Minutes, refers to the average lead time between the issuance of a tornado warning and the tornado striking a particular location, indicating "the short time frame residents have to seek shelter."
- The Illegal: Carlos, Ana's fiancée and Daniel's soon-to-be-stepfather. He is hired to work on Luke's family farm, thanks to Daniel, and plans to move with Ana to a new home in town that she planned to sign a lease for on the day of the tornado. The storm upends their plans: Carlos—who was listening to an audio CD for ESL learners, though his limited understanding of English would have prevented Carlos from receiving the warnings on the radio and taking proper precautions—is injured when the tornado overturns his truck while sheltering in an underpass (badly injuring his right hand), requiring him to be treated at the hospital; Ana agrees to have him transported there, even though his undocumented status likely means he could be deported as a result, to get him treatment for his injuries, and assures him that they will build a new life elsewhere.
- Trailer Park Tornado Magnet: Surprisingly averted. No trailer park is depicted in the town of Minninnewah.
- Truth in Television:
- During Brad's interview with Kim, they both note the tornado watch in effect for Minninnewah is a Particularly Dangerous Situation (PDS) watch. As Kim explains, the Storm Prediction Center occasionally includes PDS wording for Tornado and Severe Thunderstorm Watches to indicate that atmospheric conditions highly favor the development of significant severe weather: in this case, conditions favoring the likelihood of multiple strong to violent tornadoes (EF3–EF5), usually as a result of a significant tornado outbreak. PDS designations are also used for certain warnings issued by the National Weather Service under similar circumstances (for example, PDS Tornado Warnings are issued to indicate a damaging tornado approaching populated areas).
- Later, just before the TV signal cuts out at the Jones home while Peyton watches her dad on-air, Brad states that Minninnewah is under a Tornado Emergency, a high-end classification of Tornado Warning issued when a potentially violent tornado is approaching a densely populated area.
- The dangers of taking shelter under an overpass, a common tornado safety myth that was debunked during the prolific May 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak
during which three motorists were killed while sheltering under overpasses impacted by two of the tornadoes, are played straight here as Carlos' truck (as well as vehicles of other motorists on the highway he's on) is overturned by the tornado.
- Ungrateful Bitch: Tammy. Her homophobia makes it such that Luke saving his father's life won't make her even try to accept that her son is gay, not even expressing gratitude for rescuing Rick after finding him gravely injured in a tornado-related ATV accident. When Luke asks an EMT whether Rick will be okay, and tells her he's his son when asked about his relation to them, Tammy basically disowns him right in front of them; Luke is heartbroken to find that he's lost his family forever, and is forced to watch as his parents are taken in the ambulance to get Rick medical attention.
