“Sixty Minutes” from Netflix: A hard-hitting thriller with a funny gimmick

Professional MMA fighter Octavio Bergmann (Emilio Sakraya) prepares for one of the biggest fights of his career. His opponent is late, and that’s a problem: it’s actually the night of his daughter’s birthday party and he promised to be there. But when he enters the ring, he learns that his ex-wife is seeking sole custody unless he can come to the party in the next hour. Octavio drops everything and runs to them – angry elements of the criminal underworld who have placed a lot on his fight and will now chase him through Berlin to get him back into the ring.

That’s the premise of the cheap German Netflix action thriller Sixty minutes, which quietly hit theaters in January and is one of the strongest action films of the year so far. It is led by a great performance from Sakraya, a former national karate champion, along with strong fight choreography and propulsive storytelling motivated by a period-related plot gimmick.

Octavio has 60 minutes to get from point A to point B, with stops along the way to pick up a gift and a cake. The film lets this action take place in real time, a familiar gimmick from films like Let Lola go And Cleo from 5 to 7, and it really adds to the immersion. But it also opens up possibilities for director and co-writer Oliver Kienle that those films didn’t have, as he experiments with modern technology as narrative aids.

For one thing, Octavio wears an earpiece connected to his phone throughout the film, and Kienle and co-writer Philip Koch cleverly use phone calls to break up the monotony of an otherwise 60-minute chase scene. Scooters also play a role, both as weapons and as a means of getting around the city more quickly. Meanwhile, the literal ticking clock of Octavio’s watch and the map of his journey occasionally appear on the screen, reminding us (and him) of how far he has to go and how little time he has to get there.

Photo: Reiner Bajo/Netflix

Sixty minutesThe fight scenes are outstanding and rely on the impressive skills of Sakraya and experienced stunt performers Marie Mouroum and Aristo Luis, who both play important roles in the film. The choreography is violent but measured, reflecting many of the characters’ MMA training. These sequences place as much emphasis on how punches are dodged as they do on how the punches connect together, making the fights feel realistic. Occasionally overactive camera movements or editing undermine the choreography, but for the most part these scenes feel exciting and dangerous.

While she’s still occasionally held back by a common problem with these types of custody thrillers – the cold, callous ex-wife who’s only out to ruin the protagonist’s life – Sixty minutes at least has the courage to make it clear that Octavio has He was an absent father and missing his daughter’s party would be the final straw (his ex-wife’s threat isn’t just random cruelty). And the decision to have him run away from a big career opportunity to his daughter is a strong one, resulting in an experience where the protagonist is constantly trying to run away from the movie he’s in. Sixty minutes gives Sakraya plenty of room to express his character’s pain and frustration over his own decisions. It’s the kind of genre offering Netflix should be curating more of, and it’s a good start to 2024 for the streamer.