Netflix’s Sixty Minutes is a hard-hitting action thriller with an immersive gimmick

polygon.com:

Professional MMA fighter Octavio Bergmann (Emilio Sakraya) is getting ready 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 attend. However, as he’s entering the ring, he finds out that his ex-wife is filing for sole custody unless he can get to the party in the next hour. Octavio drops everything and runs to them — angering elements of the criminal underworld who bet big on his fight and will now chase him around Berlin to try and get him back to the ring.

That’s the premise of the economical Netflix German action thriller Sixty Minutes, which released quietly in January and is one of the stronger action movies of the year so far. It’s led by a great performance from Sakraya, who is a former national karate champion, along with strong fight choreography and propulsive storytelling motivated by a time-related plot gimmick.

Octavio has 60 minutes to get from point A to point B, with stops along the way to pick up a present and a cake. The movie lets that action play out in real-time, a familiar gimmick from movies like Run Lola Run and Cleo from 5 to 7, and it really adds to the immersion. But it also gives director and co-writer Oliver Kienle opportunities those films didn’t have, as he experiments with modern technology as narrative aids.

For one, Octavio wears an earpiece connected to his phone throughout the movie, and Kienle and co-writer Philip Koch smartly use phone calls to help break up the monotony of what could otherwise be a 60-minute chase sequence. Motorized scooters also play a part, both as weapons and as a means to get around the city faster. All the while, the literal ticking clock of Octavio’s watch and the map of his journey occasionally appear on the screen, reminding us (and him) how far he has to go, and how little time he has to get there.

Sixty Minutes’ fight scenes are stellar, leaning on the impressive skills of Sakraya and