Trace Adkins, Anne Heche and Peter Facinelli star in the 2021 disaster flick about tornadoes in the heartland.
The day starts out as usual for residents in the small heartland town of Minninnewah. It’s springtime, and big storms are just part of life. Nothing to get worked up about. Until a really big one arrives.
Such is the premise for 13 Minutes, the 2021 release that now can be streamed as a kinda-sorta appetizer for Twisters, the big-budget blockbuster blowing into theaters this weekend. Trace Adkins, Thora Birch, Peter Facinelli and late Anne Heche are among the notables cast in the independently produced disaster flick, which takes great pains to dramatize the deeply held beliefs and closed-minded attitudes that divide many folks in Minninnewah before Mother Nature lowers the boom and resets all priorities.
When it opened in limited theatrical release three years ago, veteran film critic Rex Reed raved: “A fascinating attempt to profile the lives of people in a small town in Oklahoma before, during and after a monumentally destructive, life-altering tornado, 13 Minutes features an excellent cast, wisely chosen for their diversity, playing people in crisis doing everything they can to survive a natural disaster. Written and directed with an overload of talent by Lindsay Gossling, it rarely falters and leaves a viewer grateful for a whirlwind of character-driven suspense and humanity instead of the usual Hollywood cliches.”
Roger Moore of Movie Nation was especially impressed by the special effects: “[T]he twister, when it supercells its way in, is hellishly real and a damned sight better than anything managed in the big-budget disaster movie of many years back, Twister. The state of the digital weather-disaster mimicking art has advanced that much.”
Trace Adkins (pictured above, far left), the country music superstar who has made acting his rewarding sideline, told Fox News in a 2021 interview that he was drawn to the project because he hoped it would accurately depict “the reality of what devastation like this can cause to people” in the path of a monumental natural disaster. “I wanted to tell that story… If the audience could walk out with a greater appreciation for what other people go through – that’s meaningful for me. But this story also shows how people can come together during tough times and become united.
“We need to pull together and work together, get past our differences. Hopefully, people will walk out feeling that way.”
When Fox News asked Adkins if his personal experiences affected his response to working on 13 Minutes, the singer-actor responded: “I can certainly empathize with people that go through something like that because I lost everything in a [2011] house fire. But just seeing it all just scattered in front of your eyes [by a tornado], that’s got to be a different kind of devastation. It’s very profound.”
For the benefit of those who tuned in late: The title 13 Minutes refers to the limited amount of time anyone in tornado alley has to find secure shelter once the warning alarm sounds. Peter Facinelli of the Twilight franchise is well cast as a TV weathercaster who offers sage advice to his viewers: “Don’t waste time trying to open up windows like they told you during the ‘60s!” Instead, get you and yours into an interior room — preferably, in a bathtub — and steel yourself for the worst.
As Facinelli told Gurus Magazine: “My character, Brad, takes you through the eye of the storm that’s coming. And he’s way out there. Weathermen in that part of the country are kind of celebrities in their own right. They’re larger than life personalities. As the tornado passes through, he starts to realize it’s going to hit his home and affect his family. He has to make a decision — work or family.”
Speaking with NYC Movie Guru, Facinelli noted that 13 Minutes was especially compelling during the Covid 19 lockdown.
“This, to me, is not a disaster movie. It takes place during a disaster, but it’s really about overcoming things during a disaster and how you can watch humanity come together and grow through it. Some of the characters don’t, but there's an opportunity there. I think that that’s really true to life.
“Look, there’s the Hollywood version of 13 Minutes which is Twister with Bill Paxton with all of the cows flying around and it was really exciting. What really drew me to 13 Minutes was that it felt really grounded. It felt like there were separate storylines of six different families, but you get to see how they are all interwoven together at some point. I think that that’s a microcosm of humanity and what we're going through right now in the sense that we’re all separately going through a disaster of Covid, but we’re all really intertwined. We can grow through it and some people will be better for it and some people won’t grow through it and won’t learn things from it.
“With 13 Minutes, the entertainment and the drama is in watching humanity deal with something this big and how it puts your life into perspective — the smaller things in life become less significant.”
