Six Minutes to Midnight ending explained: Keller surrenders and evacuation is evaded

Andy Goddard's Sixty Minutes to Midnight tries to be a proper war drama film, but only manages to become a sort of drama film where one spy is trying to stop an evacuation but is framed for murder. Now he has to execute the mission before someone kills him. Thankfully, the evacuation is avoided.

The film stars Dame Judy Dench, Eddie Izzard, James D'Arcy, and more. Izzard is also the co-writer alongside Celyn Jones and Andy Goddard. It wasn't a critical success and currently holds a Rotten Tomatoes score of 36%.

In her review of the film for FILMHOUNDS Magazine, Katie Hogan writes,

"The overall plot may be threadbare, the talent involved seem wasted but the story however is interesting enough to watch to the end."

That said, we shall now see how the film ends.

Keller turns out to be the main antagonist of Six Minutes to Midnight

Girls stand in a queue with flares in their hands during the final moments of Six Minutes to Midnight. (Image via Lionsgate)

There's not a lot going on in the movie, but it is established that the British Secret Service is surveilling the Augusta-Victoria College, where the daughters of Nazi elites attend school. The English teacher, Wheatley, is actually a government agent who gets killed and is replaced by another agent named Captain Thomas Miller (Eddie Izzard).

Miller is the main protagonist of Six Minutes to Midnight and is also half German. Interestingly, one day, he overhears a conversation between the school's PT teacher and a German diplomat about their plan to repatriate the girls studying there back to Germany.

As a result, Miller wants to expose them and tell everything that he just heard to his superior, Colonel Smith (David Schofield). But Ilsa murders Smith and makes it look like Miller has done it.

Now that Miller is out of the game, Ilsa can successfully execute her plan and evacuate the girls from this school..

Keller surrenders

Carla Juri [R] plays Ilse Keller in Six Minutes to Midnight. (Image via Lionsgate)

It's not like a heavy gunfight that led Ilsa Keller to surrender at the end of the film.

The final scene of Six Minutes to Midnight takes place on a cliff, where a Luftwaffe Junkers Ju 52 plane is about to evacuate the girls. They are standing in a couple of queues, and flares have been lit for the signal. However, this plan isn't executed as one RAF Spitfire forces the evacuating plane to turn away.

At the same time, Miller arrives at the location with the school's headmistress, Miss Rocholl (Judy Dench). However, the tension has risen during this sequence as Ilsa Keller is about to shoot one of the schoolgirls who tried to rebel her way out of all this madness.

But then all it requires for Keller is some persuasion, which the schoolgirl, the headmistress, and Miller successfully do, and Keller surrenders.

In the final moments of Six Minutes to Midnight, Miller says goodbye to Miss Rocholl, handing over to her the responsibility of the girls for the time being. Then we can see the girls singing the 1912 music hall song, It's a Long Way to Tipperary. Finally, the radio announces that the war between Britain and Germany has begun.

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