80 Minutes (2008) User Reviews

Don't waste any minutes of your life

[sioenroux · 3/10 · 29 April 2008]

I wasn't anticipating much (although you never know when you'll stumble upon the next "Run Lola Run"), but this failed to meet even greatly lowered expectations.

I only got 40 minutes in, to be honest -- and even that far was because I was generously hoping that the poor dialogue, punchy acting, stilted directing and uneven plot pacing would somehow start to turn the corner and redeem itself. It didn't, so I turned it off.

The story is simple: Dumb dude owes a mean guy money, so the mean guy injects dumb dude with a poison that will kill him in 80 minutes if he doesn't cough up the $15,000 he owes. Action-y hijinks ensue. Sadly, it wasn't well-conceived or written.

The camera work was nice, images sharp, lighting appealing, etc. The rest of it was 40 minutes that no amount of money can give me back.

Final Surprise

[qaz-39149 · 5/10 · 31 August 2016]

A quiet birthday celebration at home turns into a desperate race against the clock when a man is injected with poison and given eighty minutes to settle a lingering debt in Knockin' On Heaven's Door director Thomas Jahn's relentlessly tense white-knuckle thriller. Alex North is sitting at home and awaiting the arrival of his girlfriend Mona when an unexpected knock at the door reveals his old friend Walter, a likable restaurant owner who is inexplicably flanked by a pair of muscular thugs. When Alex failed to pay back the $15,000 he borrowed from Walter, he thought that his old friend would be a bit more understanding. But Walter wants his money back tonight, and in order to give Alex some incentive to work fast, he injects him with a time-release poison that will prove should an antidote fail to be administered within the next eighty minutes. Desperate, Alex races to his brother Vincent and gets into a serious car accident along the way. But the other people who were involved in the accident are none too pleased, and quickly give chase as Alex beats a hasty retreat to his brother's house. As Alex attempts to convince Vincent to give him the money that will save his life, he realizes that the police are hot on his trail as well. Not only that, but a vicious biker gang seems determined to track down Alex and his two buddies Floyd and Lloyd. Later, after seeing Lloyd shot dead by the leader of the gang, Alex manages to elude the pistol- packing bikers with a little help from Mona. Just as Alex begins to feel the effects of the poison that's currently coursing though his veins, he reaches Walter's restaurant prepared to pay off his debt. But Walter seems reluctant to accept Alex's payment. It's been quite a wild night for everyone involved, and before this debt is settled Walter has one last surprise for his old friend Alex. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Not worth it....

[stingva22 · 4/10 · 28 November 2008]

Once you get past the heavy accents and clearly Non-American dialog/culture/license plate continuity problems...the story is grudgingly possible. That is assuming they were trying to make a story that was set in America. But if you're looking for goofy action this is it. However, just when I was starting to get interested in the moral issue of friends vs money at the end...there is a plot twist that really ticked me off. I wish that they'd spent just a little bit more time fleshing this out and it might have actually been a good renter.

SPOILER

It was all a set up for his birthday party?!?!?! Really? Really.

Combine Crank and The Game and subtract everything thats good,,,

[alphakrapfen · 1/10 · 2 May 2008]

Incredible... how could one manage to get people to work in such a project when everything is so obviously far beyond ultra bad!? i mean I've watched a lot of bad movies, but we only finished watching this one because we couldn't believe that it was that predictable and unsatisfying pathetic. i'm really angry right now that i wasted so much of my time. by the way can somebody tell me how the hell they manage to meet each other over and over again after all the high speed chasing, especially the subjects on foot seem to catch up very easy... must have been stolen from the Red Flash. The dialogs are lame non convincing and boring. even the potheads seem like crappy actors and even i know at least 10 people who would have made a much better job here.the stripper nurse is a f celebrity from Germany most of the spoken English sounds awfully German. all you want to do is step into the movie , slap the actors and tell them to please continue and move on with the plot, if there were one. and why do Germans make movies in English anyhow ? this comment honors the move far to much because you should not even take the time to think about seeing it.

Well, I wasn't bored... but there were a LOT of problems

[Wizard-8 · 28 July 2010]

Don't worry, "80 Minutes" is neither a prequel or a sequel to the awful Al Pacino movie "88 Minutes". This low-budget effort does manage to be better than that big budget movie... but not by much. I'll start by listing the little merit this movie had. It jumps into the action right away, using an intriguing (but not totally original) setup. And at no time could I ever admit that I was bored by all of what was going on. That's what's good about this movie - now to list some of the many problems I found. To begin with, the central figure is not very sympathetic - he's stupid, irresponsible, and seems to deserve what he's getting. He and the other actors in the movie also have a wide range of accents, making us wonder just where this movie is supposed to be taking place. The movie has a constant claustrophobic feeling, with the camera constantly jammed up right next to the action or characters so that it's often hard to tell what's going on. The movie is also photographed badly, murky and dark-looking, and out of focus. Also, the DVD manufacturer gave this movie the wrong aspect ration, which results in information at the sides of the screen being cut off. The movie has an unexpected twist ending, one that seems to have been inspired by a certain Michael Douglas movie, but as soon as it happens, many unexplained questions come to mind regarding how the whole charade was pulled off. While I wouldn't call this movie as bad as what previous IMDb user commenters have claimed up to this point, I still would not recommend that you watch "80 Minutes".

How to save 80 minutes of your life..

[kwhp · 1/10 · 18 December 2008]

..o.k., o.k., the "minutes" aspect of critiquing this film are growing tiresome. But, seriously, when I started viewing this movie, it became apparent that this was a dog. The characters were flat, stereotypical, and almost all (especially the protagonist) unlikeable.

Another tipoff that the director has nothing to say is his reliance on gimmicks like the unfortunate tendency to film everything in jiggle-cam like the Bourne flicks with quick cutaways and too-tight face shots. The rancid colors tend to be off-putting as well.

The whole effect was disagreeable bordering on the revolting -- and this accomplished with little or no gore.

HYPER-SPOILER ALERT!

So the protagonist owes a restaurateur friend fifteen large and he shows up to collect. The restaurateur/lender injects the protagonist with some Amazonian death drug that (of course) has been co-opted by the CIA, FBI, DIA, ATF, and other gratuitously mentioned evil government agencies and causes death in -- strangely enough -- eighty minutes. His mission is to come up with the money he owes in that time or else he will mysteriously die, the symptoms resembling a heart attack. Of course the evil lender has the antidote and will, upon being repaid the debt, provide it to the protagonist so that he can avert his grisly fate.

Bam! Off he goes, scurrying around for a majority of the movie trying to put the touch on someone yet another loan to cover his debt.

Of course this is shot at night, so there are no S&Ls or credit unions open at that hour and the guy does not own anything with any equity so a collateral loan is out of the question.

But I digress.

Anyway, he returns to his place (where the evil lender awaits) brandishing an automatic and informs him that he has located someone who will go his bail but, inexplicably, the antidote is denied him, the phial crashing on the floor.

Presumably this dooms the hero who pumps a full clip into the lender with a conveniently placed stopwatch in the lower left hand corner of the screen ticking down to zero.

..but our hero does not die. All of this fades to black and white, the lights come up, a curtain raises, and out step all all of his friends (including the lender) who sing "happy birthday" to him as part of a macabre surprise party.

Warm embraces, "I was just kidding's", and hearty handshakes, obligatory boogalooing, etc. abound as all is forgiven and the whole thing declared one damn fine joke! Were I the protagonist, I would have slammed another clip into the Glock and wasted as many of those cretins as I could.

Oh yes, how to avoid wasting 80 minutes of your life aside from watching this dreadful movie? Well, I fast-forwarded through it.

But you can just read this review and figure it out.

I have no words!!

[mikenathan7 · 1/10 · 4 June 2008]

Is the first thing that came to mind after i watched 80 MINUTES. My nomination in this years winner of worst film at the RAZZIE AWARDS

Its not good, not at all, unwatchable at time...

I am not going to go into great detail about the film and this does contain spoiler innuendo, but i just have a 1 or 2 questions...

First of all: why do is the brother German or Dutch when the protagonist is American? The acting was uncomfortable to watch, and dialogue is basically none existent.

Im no critic, but i do watch a lot of films, and i have seen some bad ones... Only 80 MINUTES and one other has made me so say "What the f**k did i just watch?" and the end... What was that? Seriously? The mighty twist? It made M Night Shyamalan seem like KAISER Soza. Was that scene the actual conclusion of your film, or did you not have enough footage and decided to film you "Wrap" party? Wow...

THE worst film I have EVER seen.

[petermoran84 · 1/10 · 2 September 2008]

It's so hard to sum up how bad this film is.

The acting is abysmal, the dialogue incredibly weak, the storyline extremely dated and the final "twist" absolutely the worst moment of any film I've ever seen.

The ending is actually so hilariously bad I suggest you watch it just to see how films shouldn't be made.

It's a shame the voting only allows me to go as low as 1 out of 10 for this because even that is generous.

Thomas Jahn is certainly not a writer/director I would be eager to see more from.

Terrible ending kills speedy film

[gridoon2024 · 4/10 · 16 March 2015]

"80 Minutes" is "DOA" for the post-Tarantino generation. Thomas Jahn proves to be a better director than writer (something which, judging by his IMDb page, he seems to have realized himself; after 2011, he only directs): the film maintains a speedy forward movement, and it has some good car stunts. But the dialogue is often amateurish, and the ending practically cancels out the entire movie! I've seen this type of ending done before, successfully, ("The Game" comes to mind), but here it just makes "80 Minutes" a waste of, well, a few more than 80 minutes. Also, the stupendously sexy Natalia Avelon is wasted in a rather minor part. *1/2 out of 4.

Several satisfying plot twists, humor, witty banter and a lot of heart from its central characters

[ginocox-206-336968 · 6/10 · 17 March 2018]

"80 Minutes" seems at first as if it will be a low-budget version of "Crank," but with an unexpected and fairly effective plot twist at the climax, it morphs into a low-budget version of an entirely different film, which I will not allude to, so as to avoid spoiling the surprise, other than saying it was an excellent film with first-rate talent. While 80M is limited by its budget, it manages to retain the moral and emotional B-story of the other film.

80M isn't a great film, but it offers several satisfying plot twists, humor, witty banter and a lot of heart from its central characters. Production values are barely sufficient to convey the story. The three central characters deliver interesting performances, but many of the supporting characters lack depth. It's not without its faults, but it has its moments.

Waste of 80 minutes

[jackass918273645 · 2/10 · 28 May 2012]

Whilst watching this I felt I was the one slowing dieing. The acting is wooden and worse then that at a school play. The characters are awful, it also has the worst chase scene, after hitting into a new jaguar the main character is chased by a 50+ balding fat man. The chaser doesn't have a gun, and the worst that could possibly happen if caught is a stern telling off.

The whole film fails to draw you in, and seems unbelievable the whole time. It was actually a struggle to watch the whole film. The practical joke ends up with a lot big costs for other people, which is just to be forgotten at the end.

Almost bad

[Rodrigo_Amaro · 6/10 · 9 December 2010]

"80 Minutes" tells the story of Alex (Gabriel Mann) a guy who owes money to some bad guys and they want the money back as fast as possible. How they gonna make Alex give them the money if he doesn't have any? They inject a powerful poison through his veins giving to Alex life enough for 80 minutes to get the money and receive an antidote.

From here you might think that the plot is going to be very predictable with a man running away the whole movie trying to get the money, trying to save his life in possible ways. And you're right! You may have seen that before in "Crank" and in the underrated thriller "DOA" (1988). There isn't so many differences between all these films except a few things that can make a great movie or a bad movie being what it is.

In the case of "80 Minutes" the script comes with annoying and dumb situations, e.g. the character in the Jaguar who appears to make Alex's life something more pathetical after an traffic accident where this guy's Jaguar end up being smashed. And this guy starts to chase Alex just because of that and of course he doesn't know what's happening with the hero. He's only there to annoy the viewer and make the clock goes faster to Alex. There's also in the script some dumbfounding bad lines that are simply thrown on the screen for repetitive and funny purposes. I can't remember the scene exactly but there was moments after someone got killed during a scene and the characters kept saying "You shot him, man" or "He's dead, man!" so many times that I laughed a bit. That drags you out of the film, and you don't care about anyone there, the tension disappeared.

The film was directed and edited by Thomas Jahn. In the first function he goes okay. On the second one he is awful. Excessive cuts, shaky camera, no planning at all. Everything is confusing and I thought to myself while I was watching it that I could and can do a better job with using Windows Media Player, seriously.

But you may wonder why I'm giving 6 stars to this. It is a quite watchable film, with some good moments and the daring of the writer for using the same ending of David Fincher's "The Game". In the case of Fincher's film was very interesting to see, it worked very well. In the case of "80 Minutes" I felt betrayed, hated it and loved it at the same time. That doesn't mean it works. Many people will simply hate it because it was just too simple and absurd and it denies everything that just happened, kind of a silly ending.

And the 6 goes for because I've seen worst things than this film (but I've seen better things too). But it's better to watch a weak film than to have worst situations in life. That's just my opinion. 6/10

Major disappointment

[maeander · 31 July 2011]

WARNING!!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! If you are curious/interested in this movie...if there is some overwhelming reason why you want to see it (Xenia Seeberg of LEXX fame has a small part), do not read this review.

I never give the surprise ending away. I detest people who do. But after spending 90 minutes watching this waste of time...(if it's called "80 minutes", why is it 90 minutes long?)...I am giving the ending away.

SPOILER ALERT!!! The entire story is a birthday gag. The poison, the deaths, the entire tension of the film is a put on. There is no poison. The 15,000 debt has already been paid. No one dies. Everyone is in on the gag. It's all a birthday joke played on the main character. In the end they all hoist a pint in his honor.

Arghhhh!!!!!!

Don't waste your time. Stay away from this. You've been warned.