Mjeteconer Just perfect...

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

kyliem11 Interesting movie about a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1939. The lead character Elser, well played by Christian Friedel, is a young carpenter who see's trouble coming in the form of Hitler and decides to do something about it. We start with the assassination, which fails by 13 minutes, hence the title, because Hitler leaves early. The rest of the story is told using flashbacks while Elser is being interrogated. Some of the interrogation methods used are quite brutal and show what it must have been like if you crossed the Nazi party back in the thirties and forties.This true story is well told and makes interesting viewing.

peefyn Movie about assassination-attempts has a natural point to use as its climax: the attempt itself. It would not be easy to keep the ending surprising if the target is Adolf Hitler, and the year 1939. This movie thankfully does not attempt to build to the grand assassination attempt, but opens with it, and spends the rest of the runtime pondering: Who is this Elser guy? What did he do? How did he do it? Why did he do it? It does this by using the interrogations as a sort of frame, and then delving into episodes from Elser's life. It does not attempt to tell his entire life story, but rather pick scenes helpfully to understand the state of mind he was in during that pivotal moment in 1939.This is an interesting story that is very much worth telling. Elser seems to be an extraordinary character, and it's one of those moments in history where everything could have been completely different. The movie has taken some shortcuts though, as is to be expected. Elser is shown as both a clever, talented man (as he was), but at also with some faults. He is shown as almost apolitical, which makes for an interesting character, but the movie would have been better if they had explored what is known about Elser's actual relationship with Nazism.Over all it is a movie worth seeing, even though it is easy to be bored by all of the movie about the brave men who fought Nazism, as they often spend very little time on how Nazis also were people. Good vs evil is a misrepresentation. That said, this movie handles much better than many other movies with similar subjects.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "Elser" is a German movie from this year that runs slightly under 2 hours. The director is Oliver Hirschbiegel and you may have seen his Oscar nominee "Der Untergang" or "Das Experiment". This one here is his newest work and just like "Der Untergang", it is another movie closely related to Nazi Germany. Fred and Léonie-Claire Breinersdorfer is a father-daughter pairing and we will probably see more of them in the future. The woman has worked mostly on television so far, while her father has written the Oscar nominated "Sophie Scholl" among other films.The lead actor is Christian Friedel, who you may or may not have seen in Michael Haneke's "Das weiße Band". Just like in that one, Friedel plays alongside Burghart Klaußner, who plays the biggest supporting character here. Of course, Friedel plays the title character in this one. Georg Elser was German resistance fighter who tried to assassinate Hitler long before Stauffenberg and yet the latter has many films (inclusing Tom Cruise's) made about him why Elser has almost none. I saw Klaus Maria Brandauer played him once roughly 25 years ago, but even that movie hardly anybody saw. So why isn't Elser more famous in film. I can only speculate here. Maybe there is not enough known about his life before or after the assassination attempt or maybe he simply is not an interesting character.In any case, I just checked for Katharina Schüttler's character and I cannot find anything about a woman named Elsa in Elser's life. Also I cannot see how closely Nebe really was to Elser. Yes he probably played a role in a later assassination attempt, but did he really know and directly meet Elser? I guess it may be true that we simply do not know enough about the real Elser to make this a fascinating and authentic watch. About Katharina Schüttler, I kind of like her as an actress, but somehow I feel her characters, especially the historic ones, are frequently very similar, so that it looks to me that she keeps playing the same characters. I hope she will get out of that niche soon. I'm sure she has the talent. Burghart Klaußner is easily one of my favorite actors and I was certainly curious about him in this one as he also scored another German Film Awards nomination, but as a whole I was sadly fairly underwhelmed by him. I guess the character was not written interestingly enough for Klaußner to make a lasting impression like he did with Fritz Bauer recently. Johann von Bülow plays the epitome evil Nazi official, something we have seen a hundred times already in the same manner.This is also generally the problem of the movie: The only thing somewhat innovative here is that the title character is fairly unknown today, but the story and everything they constructed around him was not innovative by any means. Of course, it's difficult to bring something new to the table with all these Nazi movies made, but Hirschbiegel has done it before, so I am a bit disappointed it became all so generic here. One interesting elaboration could have been for example why Elser wasn't killed right away after he confessed, but lived on for another 5 years. Pretty strange if you try to kill the Fuehrer isn't it? And maybe Neve should have gotten his own movie. He felt a bit wasted here. Still, all in all, not a bad watch by any means, just a mediocre script that does not do justice to the character of Georg Elser I am sure. Could have been a lot more this movie. Still worth a watch for everybody with an interest in German history of the 20th century.

Red-Barracuda Oliver Hirschbiegel directed the celebrated war drama Downfall (2004) about the last week in the life of Adolf Hitler. With his new movie 13 Minutes, he returns to the subject of life in Nazi Germany but this time events are set mainly in the years leading up to the war. More specifically it focuses on a man who tried unsuccessfully to kill Hitler in the early months of a conflict that would go on to claim 55 million lives. The man is Georg Elser, who was a carpenter who was unaffiliated with any political party. He worked alone and set up a bomb that was set to go off in a beer hall where Hitler had a scheduled meeting. The film's title comes from the fact that the assassination attempt was ultimately unsuccessful, given that the Fuhrer left the target location thirteen minutes ahead of schedule. Oddly, Elser is a man who is little known. This is especially strange when you consider how well known the later assassination attempt on Hitler by Claus von Stauffenberg is. Elser by contrast seems to have been marginalised by history, which is why this film is so welcome as this is a man who deserves to have his story celebrated. Aside from a few intimate conversations and moments, the details contained in this film are based on historical accounts.The structure of the story is told from the point that Elser is caught just after the bombing. From here he is interrogated by the Nazis and the story flashes back in sections so that we see how this musician/carpenter came to ultimately undertake his dangerous act. In taking this approach, the film is able to not only tell a historical drama but to also look at Nazi Germany in the years leading up to the war, specifically life in the countryside. Life in German rural villages always seems somewhat idyllic as was exploited by the Heimat films of the time and so it is especially jarring to see life continue in such a place but with an ever increasing Nazi presence, initially shown by the presence of small groups of brown shirts through to large swastika flags draped all over town leading ultimately to active persecution of citizens. People undesirable to the Nazis are taken away or pilloried by the authorities and the people of the village feel powerless to do anything about it. The film considers just how hard it was to actually go counter to the Nazi system at the time, seeing that all aspects of life were geared against disobedience to the Nazi state.13 Minutes is a very good film because it combines a little know but important story with a setting in Nazi Germany rarely focused on. The performances are universally excellent and the overall authenticity is impressive. This extends to some disturbing torture scenes which feature actual Nazi interrogation methods. It's, therefore, a fairly intense film but one that surprisingly finds new things to tell us about a period in history which has had so many cinematic treatments and documentaries. It should go some way to elevate Elser himself more into the public consciousness and ensure his actions are never forgotten.