Amazon.com Essential Video
It's difficult to create a film that's fast paced, exciting, and aesthetically appealing without diluting its dialogue.
Run Lola Run, directed and written by Tom Tykwer, is an enchanting balance of pace and narrative, creating a universal parable that leaps over cultural barriers. This is the story of young Lola (Franka Potente) and her boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu). In the space of 20 minutes, they must come up with 100,000 deutsche marks to pay back a seedy gangster, who will be less than forgiving when he finds out that Manni incompetently lost his cash to an opportunistic vagrant. Lola, confronted with one obstacle after another, rides an emotional roller coaster in her high-speed efforts to help the hapless Manni--attempting to extract the cash first from her double-dealing father (appropriately a bank manager), and then by any means necessary. From this point nothing goes right for either protagonist, but just when you think you've figured out the movie, the director introduces a series of brilliant existential twists that boggle the mind. Tykwer uses rapid camera movements and innovative pauses to explore the theme of cause and effect. Accompanied by a pulse-pounding soundtrack, we follow Lola through every turn and every heartbreak as she and Manni rush forward on a collision course with fate. There were a variety of original and intelligent films released in 1999, but perhaps none were as witty and clever as this little gem--one of the best foreign films of the year.
--Jeremy Storey
Review
A film that sprinkles spine-tingling chills for its entire 81 minutes, Lola Rennt (known in the U.S. as Run Lola Run) is an intensely satisfying fusion of driving techno music and stunning visuals. Tom Tykwer's hip, German-language thriller is known primarily for its unique structure -- part video game, part choose-your-own-adventure -- which propels Franka Potente's feisty yet vulnerable Lola through three versions of a plan to secure an impossible sum of money in the next 20 minutes. But it's the details within that structure that sometimes escape critics' attention. In one original device, Tykwer follows the lives of the people Lola blows past, and how that split-second interaction helps determine the next months or even years of their lives. As they turn to stare or shout an insult, Tykwer zooms in on their faces, kicking off a flurry of snapshots that serve as chilling portents and bracing commentary on the interconnectedness of random events. Lola's initial idea for getting the money is the same each time, meaning that the viewer thrice watches very similar footage, but it's the small variations that make it newly engaging each time. The sequences are separated by the film's only quiet moments -- touching flashbacks of pillow talk in which Lola and Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) reveal their deepest insecurities. Shot through a gauzy red filter, these moments provide stark contrasts to the brashness of the rest of the film. The action is fueled throughout by pumping rave music, much of it composed by Tykwer himself. The resulting package is a spike of adrenaline that should thrill anyone who appreciates a smart concept executed at a frenetic pace. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
DVD ~ Alejandro Amenábar
DVD ~ Roland Suso Richter
~ Run Lola Run
![Casablanca [Blu-ray]](http://img.amazon.ca/images/I/51skMgGSPGL._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
