Ten Minute Alibi: A Clock-Watching Exercise in Strategy

Is it worth your time?

Honestly, if you have a soft spot for 1930s stage-bound dramas where people stand in rooms and talk about their feelings and their crimes, you'll probably get a kick out of Ten Minute Alibi. It’s definitely not for anyone who needs a car chase or a quick pace. If you get bored by guys in suits pacing around a parlor, skip this one and watch something more kinetic like Them Thar Hills instead.

The whole gimmick here is the clock. It’s all about the math of murder.

Our protagonist, Derwent, is basically playing a high-stakes game of chess against his own brain. He’s trying to map out a murder that’s technically impossible to pin on him because, you know, the alibi has to be perfect. The film really wants you to obsess over the timing of it all. It gets so focused on the logistics that I started checking my own watch, which is probably the intended meta-experience but it gets a bit exhausting after a while.

There's this one moment where he’s staring at a clock, and you can just feel the movie sweating to make sure you know exactly what time it is. It’s almost too precise. You start to wonder if he’s a genius or just a guy who really, really needs to get a hobby.

The transition from his perfect, imaginary crime to the actual investigation by Pember and Brace feels a bit like hitting a brick wall. Suddenly, the tension shifts from 'Will he get away with it?' to 'Wait, why are these guys talking so much?'

• The pocket watch usage is bordering on aggressive.
• The parlor set looks like it’s being held together by pure willpower and dust.
• Some of the dialogue feels like it was written for a stage play, and—well, it was, so that tracks.

I couldn't help but think about how much simpler the villains were in something like The Chauffeur. Here, the villainy is all about social maneuvering and cold, hard, boring calculations. It’s not flashy. It’s just... polite evil. 🕰️

Maybe it’s just me, but the movie gets noticeably better when the characters stop explaining their plans and just let things fall apart. It’s messy. It’s not quite as smart as it thinks it is. But there’s something kind of charming about how hard it’s trying to be clever.

Don't look for deep psychological trauma here. It’s just a puzzle. A puzzle that takes about ten minutes to solve but spends the rest of the runtime explaining why the puzzle was there in the first place.