Comment on “13 Minutes”: A portrait of the man behind the 1939 plot to kill Hitler

The German historical drama “13 Minutes” opens with the sound of strenuous human grunting, accompanied by the regular ticktock of a mechanical timer. It’s Nov. 8, 1939, several hours before an explosive device, planted by Georg Elser, is set to go off, almost killing Adolf Hitler, who, as history tells us, had left the building in which the bomb was planted mere minutes earlier (hence the film’s English title, which has been changed from the original, limply un-thrillerish “Elser”). After Georg (Christian Friedel) has been arrested while trying to slip across the Swiss border with a pocketful of bombmaking plans, the film flashes back to 1932, when we are introduced to Elser several years before he has become radicalized.