Octavio Bergmann (Emilio Sakraya) has a problem.

A German MMA fighter is just minutes away from fighting a leading contender when he gets a call from his ex-wife.  It is his daughter’s birthday and Octavio is told that if he doesn’t make it to her birthday party within an hour, Octavio’s ex-wife is going to demand full custody of her.  Octavio runs from the match, hoping that he can somehow make it from one end of Berlin to the next in just 60 minutes.

What Octavio doesn’t know is that the fight was fixed.  Octavio’s opponent agreed to take a dive so a bunch of gamblers put down a lot of money on Octavio winning the fight.  If Octavio forfeits, they’ll lose all of their money.  Soon, Octavio finds himself being pursued by motely collection of Serbian mobsters, bikers, and cops.  Meanwhile, Octavio just wants to pick up a cake and his daughter’s birthday gift (an adorable kitten named Onion) and make it to the party in time.

That’s not a bad premise for an action film and Sixty Minutes features a lot of exciting fight scenes as Octavio battles his way to his ex-wife’s house.  Unfortunately, it soon becomes obvious that the film is cheating a bit with the time frame.  When Octavio takes off running, a stopwatch lets us know that he has 59 minutes and 59 seconds left.  About ten minutes later, the stopwatch reappears and tries to convince us that only four minutes have passed.  Octavio has to face a lot of obstacles on his way to that birthday party but it’s hard to create any suspense when the audience knows that the movie isn’t going to be honest about how much time has passed.  If any film cries out for a “real time” approach, it’s this movie.

(Personally, I would have changed the title to 80 Minutes.  It would still be a stretch to claim that the majority of the movie’s action could have taken place over such a compressed time frame but it would still be more believable than 60.)

On the plus side, the action scenes are exciting.  Emilio Sakraya is not the most expressive of actors but, as a former Full-Contact Karate champion, he’s totally convincing in the fight scenes.  Wisely, the film does not try to convince us that Octavio is some sort of genius.  He is often his own worst enemy.  (If you had to get across Berlin in a narrowly-allotted amount of time, would you be stupid enough to stop to argue with the cops?)  And there definitely is something rather sweet about Octavio’s determination to make sure that his daughter gets her birthday present.  (And fear not, animal lovers — the cat survives the film.)  Finally, the soundtrack was heavy on EDM, which I definitely appreciated.

With all of the scenes of Octavio running through Berlin and checking his watch to see how much time he had left, the film feels a bit like a direct descendant of Run, Lola, Run.  Unfortunately, Sixty Minutes is nowhere near as exciting, witty, or thoughtful as Tom Tykwer’s classic film.  Still, Sixty Minutes is entertaining when taken on its own terms.  Just don’t make the mistake of trying to count the minutes.