Review of Run Lola Run (1998) by Anthony A — 20 Aug 2010

I haven't been writing many reviews at the moment due to RT's ongoing troubles yet when I saw this film I was so amazed I just had to bring it to your attention.

This film was shot with a relatively small budget 1.75 million, on a small number of locations, with a small amount of dialogue yet is far better than any films that have come out of Hollywood for years.

Sadly the director who is very talented went to Hollywood after making this and made such films as Heaven, Perfume: the story of a murder, and The International, all of which have received mediocre reviews from critics, I hope that he return to Germany and makes more film like this one, I would definitely watch them. He seems to be another case of talent gone wrong in Hollywood.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD.......

The films begins with Lola (Franka Potente) receiving a call from her boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) who 'while on a "job" for a criminal mislaid 100.000 marks and now must meet with the criminal ,whose name is Ronnie, and get into fatal trouble because of his error. He must meet his boss at 12.00 exactly, Lola has 20 minutes to get there and come up with a solution.

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The direction was ingenious, even with the limited resources Tom Tykwer manages to make a film that is marvellous to watch. The colours are vibrant especially Lola's bright red hair. The motions of the camera while she runs are excellent as they imply motion without resorting to the hand-held camera style which often annoys me. The editing was very fast paced but coherent and varies between slightly longer shots and extremely rapid ones while keeping it well balanced so it's basically impossible to get bored.

The diversity of filming techniques used in this film is astounding; split screens are used to great effect as well as fast motion, slow motion, tracking shots..... Definitely a great directional achievement.

The acting was very good, Franka Potente was great as Lola, extremely convincing in the role and a great female lead. Bleibtreu was not as good as Potente but his performance didn't spoil the film is any way, it just seems weak next too Potente's excellent performance. All the supporting actors are well cast and convincing, the actor who plays Lola's father was great. Although I did think that his partner looked like a bloke with a wig on, but that's just my opinion I suppose.

The soundtrack has been praised a lot, and all I can say is that it fully deserves all the praise, it's great, very dynamic which it should be because this film is very motion orientated. The soundtrack is always very important to me when I watch a film (which is why my favourite films have excellent soundtracks) and I find that all too often enough attention hasn't been paid to it and that will disappoint me. In this film, the soundtrack plays an very significant part and isn't pushed into the background by other aspects of the film but instead fills whole scenes and really makes them great.

The plot is far more interesting that it first appears, a critic has said ""In fact, it turns out, not surprisingly, that it is boring to watch someone run for 87 minutes..."", now this critic has clearly missed the point, the film is more about events that are actions can trigger or change, it's also an original love-story.

Possible spoilers ahead.....

But the most interesting thing about this film is the fact that there are three versions of the events, the first one ends tragically for Lola, then we see a flash-bask of her questioning Manni about his love for her, then the story appears to start all over again, but this time it ends tragically for Manni and during the flashback it is he who questions Lola about her love for him, the third story and final one is very different and ends well, much better than the first two and (for me at least) there was no question that the third one was the "real" one.

All these scenario's are different versions of Lola's reality, the thing is that she can somehow choose to start over and try again when she doesn't succeed and seemingly learn from her mistakes in the previous version.

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There is another interesting aspect of this film that involves the people that cross Lola's path, but I won't say anymore about it.

Now some may find a few events in this film to be ludicrous, such as Lola?s very, very loud scream or the reviving of the dying man but personally I enjoyed that and liked the surreal aspect it added to the film, which (combined with other things) stops it from being another silly documentary style film and transforms it into something far superior.

This film is a great example of not putting style over substance, sure this is a very stylish film yet it also contains rather deep themes which are very thought provoking.

The film is in German and although I don't know if a dubbed version exists, I strongly recommend watching it in German with sub-titles, much will be changed if you don't.

I found this film interesting in the way it offered a look at Berlin in the 90's, a quite limited look but still interesting. The characters were also interesting and quite unlike anything you would see in a Hollywood film, in this film the "hero" is a female and is trying to save her boyfriend, that's not very common is Hollywood films.

Well, I think I've said enough, if you want to know more about this amazing film I suggest you go and watch it as soon as you can.

I was surprised to see that although it has a high rating not many people have given this 100%, I find that strange because I really can't see anything wrong with this film, it's one of the most original, entertaining and unpretentious film I've seen.

Highly recommended, even if you don't watch many international films I strongly suggest you watch this one, it's definitely worth it.