'13 Minutes' delves into life of man who plotted 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, the film flashes back to 1932, when we are introduced to Elser years before he has become radicalized. The movie is, as it turns out, less a white-knuckle drama about the nuts and bolts of a failed political assassination than it is a psychological portrait of resistance, made all the more timely - and unsettling - given the current political climate in the United States.

Friedel's performance is top-notch, especially when the film flashes forward again to scenes of his post-arrest interrogation and torture. Also good: Burghart Klaussner as Georg's chief inquisitor, Arthur Nebe (who himself went on to become involved in the 1944 plot to kill the Fuhrer).

But much of the film dwells on Elser's relationship with Elsa (Katharina Schüttler), his former fiancee. These passages add emotional texture to the tale, but little suspense.

That seems to be by design. In the end, "13 Minutes" isn't about the logistics of one man's plot to kill Hitler at all, but about what made that man tick.