Run Lola Run (1999)
Starring Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtrau, Herbert Knaup.
Directed by Tom Tykwer.
Rated R.
Grade: B+
With the abundance of trite, recycled movies in the late '90s, there is a tremendous demand by movie lovers (never mind movie critics) for movies that present the wide film audience with something truly original: perhaps audaciously, perhaps purely thematically. For the former, you need look no further than director Tom Tykwer's incredible German thriller Run Lola Run, a movie that may make some viewers need a cooling off period afterwards.
Lola, a contemporary Goth-girl with blazing red hair receives a desperate phone call from her boyfriend Manni one day. It seems that because she was late delivering something he lost a bag containing a hundred thousand Marks, and if he doesn't deliver a hundred thousand marks within the next twenty minutes, he will be killed. This gives Lola twenty minutes to come up with 100,000 marks, or her boyfriend dies. So she runs -- not just jogs, sprints -- in hopes that somehow, someway, she'll be able to obtain the money and save a life.
From there, as critic Steve Rhodes described it, Run Lola Run plays a bit like "Sliding Doors on steroids. With a non-stop techno soundtrack, wierd camerawork, all kinds of insane zooms and a truly breakneck pace, anyone that is bored with Run Lola Run has to be smoking something. Indeed, the movie is often outrageously exciting, as well as bitterly ironic and subtly serious.
Very much like Titanic, Run Lola Run is an achievement with filmmaking much more than it is an achievement in film. The way the movie is made, for pure visual style, Tykwer's movie is breathtaking (literally, sometimes). Thematically it does leave something to be desired; it toys around with some intriguing ideas but does occasionally seem as if there is little substance behind all of the flash.
While you are watching, this will not matter. Running a breezy 81 minutes, this is one movie I wished was longer because it was so damn good while it lasted. It is the equivalent of a roller-coaster in the amount of thrills and fun that it offers.