Mark Reviews Movies: SIX MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 25, 2021

It's the end of summer in 1939. Nazi Germany is readying to invade Poland. The United Kingdom is preparing for the war that inevitably will follow that aggression. Outside the small English town of Bexhill-on-Sea, there is a finishing school for teenage girls. Its students are all German. Its insignia features the Union Jack on one side and a swastika on the other.

That's the intriguing premise of Six Minutes to Midnight, a race-against-the-clock spy thriller in which an undercover English agent must infiltrate and monitor the school. The thinking here is simple: If the students—all daughters and goddaughters of the Nazi high command and other prominent members of German society—are whisked away home to Germany, war will quickly follow.

There are few other missions within this bigger one, having to do with the mysterious death of another undercover agent and a secret list of every British asset inside Germany. It's kind of fascinating to watch screenwriters Andy Goddard (who also directed), Eddie Izzard (who also stars), and Celyn Jones try to turn this odd, little piece of history into something of such grand importance for the forthcoming war. This story may be more or less based on a true one, in that the school and its daughters of the German powerful existed, but the mechanics of the movie's plot increasingly feel contrived—both for suspense and for imbuing the tale with historical import.

A male teacher at the Augusta Victoria College runs from there one day, sits on a boardwalk in town, and disappears—his computer-generated hat blowing in the wind toward the sea. Thomas Miller (Izzard), a teacher of English and German heritage, arrives shortly after, looking for the job. Miss Rocholl (Judi Dench), the school's headmistress, gives him the role on a temporary basis. The students, especially a quiet and whip-smart girl named Gretel (Tijan Marei), come to admire him, because he doesn't stick to a strict lesson plan and can speak German. Even the girls' strict governess Ilse Keller (Carla Juri) looks upon Thomas with some fondness.

Thomas isn't as he seems, though. He's actually a spy, working for British intelligence, assigned by Colonel Smith (David Schofield) to keep tabs on the school and its occupants. There is, of course, the matter of the approaching war, of which the girls' departure would serve as a signal, but there's also something darker. The girls listen raptly to speeches from Adolf Hitler on the radio, and Miss Rocholl even joins her students when they rise, throw up an arm in a salute, and start chanting a string of hails.

There's little denying that this premise, the school's mostly forgotten existence in history, and the broader implications of what the Nazi higher-ups might have planned for these girls are fascinating. Goddard, Izzard, and Jones' script gives us a sense of the go-along-to-get-along attitude that permeates the school's continued operation, as well as the way that some of the pre-war attitude toward the Nazi regime only saw the nationalistic face of it.

At first, Miss Rocholl actually offers a rationalization for that contemporary German government. They only, from her limited perspective, have pride in themselves. She, a life-long educator of at least two generations, can understand that sentiment. The headmistress is later horrified when she begins to understand the sinister racial and ethnic intentions of the Nazi ideology, put forth by Ilse to the already-susceptible girls (Only Gretel sees through the blatantly hateful ideas, but like the other girls, she's more a MacGuffin, particularly in a climactic moment, than an actual character).

As intriguing and thoughtfully terrifying as this look into the school and its culture is, most of the story is devoted to a series of spy games. Each of the new beats, complications, and challenges becomes more contrived and convoluted than the last.

The missing teacher's body is discovered. Thomas discovers the existence of a deadly list that could threaten British agents in Germany. He discovers the plan to evacuate the girls, finds himself at the scene of a different murder, and learns that the local police are pretty incompetent during an extended, almost farcical chase (Thomas actually gets a full night's sleep in the middle of it, and Goddard's staging of the various close-calls makes Thomas seem like a pretty terrible spy on a few occasions). Enemies and secret traitors are revealed, as the story's political aims are derailed for some fights, some a couple additional chases, and a few standoffs.

The cast and performances are mostly fine—from Izzard to Dench, from Juri to Marei, from James D'Arcy as an officer from Scotland Yard (with a secret, of course) to Jim Broadbent as a conveniently helpful bus driver. Whatever potential exists within these characters, though, is almost entirely evaded to keep the plot, with its assorted twists and races toward a goal, in motion.

As such, Six Minutes to Midnight gives us a history lesson that's light on its history and message. The spy games here are the point, and they're only competent in the movie's best moments.

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