Run Lola Run [Lola Rennt] by Tom Tykwer (1998)
3 January 2007A super stylish action packed love story that introduced the world to Franka Potente. The story actually reminds me of the 1997 Hong Kong film TOO MANY WAYS TO BE NUMBER ONE in it’s temporal telling. It is a story of love, and also of how a single event can change everything for you and for everyone else, and it is all about your determination that can change everything. A wonderful thrill ride, this German film is a must see!! I watched this on HDNET and it looks alright. The wide shots looked great, but the close up motion running shots were a bit too compressed, and the uprezzed video which is in some parts didn’t look so good, but still better than a DVD, I am just getting spoiled by HD now. Ha, how nice that is.
German woman Lola (Franka Potente) gets a call from her boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu). She didn’t show up to pick him up when she was supposed to, so he is now in trouble. It seems he did some deal for a bad guy, selling cars for diamonds, and getting money, and when Lola didn’t show up he took the subway, but he ran when he saw cops and lost his bag of money, knowing a homeless guy got it. So he needs 100,000 Deutschmarks in 20 minutes or he is either going to die or rob a store to get the money. Lola has 20 minutes to save him.
REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…
Lola hangs up the phone and decides to ask her dad, but she has had her moped stolen (why she was late), and she takes off running, and bumping into people (and we see in still photos what happens to them, fortune or horror in the future) and she gets to her father’s bank, where he is talking to the woman he is cheating on Lola’s mother with and going to have a baby with. Her father kicks out Lola saying he will never see her or her mother again. Lola decides to go to Mani, but she is too late, and Mani is robbing the place. Lola helps him, getting a gun from a guard, but when they run cops surround them, and Lola is shot. As she lays dyeing she thinks of her relationship with Manni and that she must make a decision about their relationship, and she decides she can’t die.
We go back in time to the phone call, and she leaves, but is tripped on the stairs and things happen slightly differently, and her father and his lover are arguing because it seems she is not pregnant with his kid, but with someone else’s. Lola’s father won’t listen and she starts smashing things, and finally gets the guards gun and takes her father hostage to get the $100,000. She gets it and goes outside, but cops are everywhere, but they let her go thinking she is innocent. She runs and stops Manni, but he is run over by an ambulance.
We go back a third time, this time Lola jumps the kid and dog, and gets going early, and things happen differently again. She misses her father at the bank, and just keeps running till she sees a Casino and gets a $100 chip. She bets on 20 on Roulette and wins $3500, and lays it all down again and screams, and through shear force of will she stops the ball at 20, winning the money she needs to save Manni, but this time things happen differently and Manni saw the homeless guy and chased it down. He got the money and gave the guy his gun, and settled the deal with the bad guy. And he walks up to Lola, all nonchalant, asking what is in her bag…
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Awesome. Totally Awesome film. Stylish and so well done.
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