...
Verdict
‘Run Lola Run’ is a flamboyant and at times a bit pretentious, at others firmly tongue in cheek exercise in the joys of movie-making. It lacks in substance to some extent so people who look for a thick story with rich characterization would do better to look ... Read review
It's difficult to create a film that's fast paced, exciting and aesthetically appealing ... more
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 le...
Postage & Packaging: £1.21 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
It's difficult to create a film that's fast paced, exciting and aesthetically appealing ... more
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 le...
Postage & Packaging: Free! Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours...
Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), who works as a small-time courier for a big-time gangster, is in ... more
huge trouble. He has accidentally left the cash from a mob deal on the subway, and he has only twenty minutes to deliver the 100,000 marks to his unforgiving bos...
Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) who works as a small-time courier for a big-time gangster is in ... more
huge trouble. He has accidentally left the cash from a mob deal on the subway and he has only twenty minutes to deliver the 100 000 marks to his unforgiving bos...
Postage & Packaging: £0.00 Availability: 3-5 working days
Co-composed by director Tom Tykwer, the idea here is brilliantly simple--the punk-like ... more
Lola's pavement pounding needs constant momentum to avoid coming off as Marathon footage. With accelerating beats, and ever-upwardly spiralling chord progressions, we follow actress/song-writer Franka Potente's every footfall. In the booklet you'll find a candidly honest piece of advice: "To re-experience the movie, listen to tracks 2-9. For an alternative experience, listen to the remixes." They are quite abstract developments of the original material, so can either be seen as a bonus or padding (e.g. the original "Casino" takes us the furthest away from club territory, while the remix races right back into it). At breakneck pace this album perfectly captures the experience of seeing the movie while the barrage of techno beats keeps up a rhythmic sprint that'll have you tapping feet if not wanting to run and see the film straight away. --Paul Tonks
Postage & Packaging:Free! Availability:Usually dispatched within 24 hours...
Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), who works as a small-time courier for a big-time gangster, is in ... more
huge trouble. He has accidentally left the cash from a mob deal on the subway, and he has only twenty minutes to deliver the 100,000 marks to his unforgiving boss. Desperate, he calls his girlfriend, Lola (Franka Potente), the only person who can rescue him form certain death. As the seconds tick away and the tiniest choices become life altering, Lola must try to reach Manni before the line between fate and fortune begins to blur.
Believe (Franka Potente) Introduction (Tykwer/Klimek/Heil) Running One ... more
(Tykwer/Klimek/Heil) Supermarket (Tykwer/Klimek/Heil) Running Two (Tykwer/Klimek/Heil) Running Three (Tykwer/Klimek/Heil) Casino (Tykwer/Klimek/Heil) Somebody Has To Pay (Susie Van Der Meer) Wish (Komm zu mir) (Franka Potente & Thomas D) Introduction (Remix) (Sun Electric) Supermarket (Super Clemek Remix) (Clemek;Cle) Running One (Large Mix) (Lee Spencer & Johnny Klimek) Running Two (Remix) (Operation Phoenix) Casino (Solid State Remix) (Tommi Eckart) Wish (Big) (Franka Potente & Thomas D)
Postage & Packaging:£0.00 Availability:3-5 working days
Production Year: 1964 - Action/Adventure - Director: Cyril Endfield - Original Language: English - Classification: Parental Guidance - Starring:Stanley Baker, Jack Hawkins, Ulla Jacobsson, James Booth, Michael Caine, Nigel Green
Production Year: 2002 - Action/Adventure - Director: Vincenzo Natali - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring:Lucy Liu, David Hewlett, Anne Marie Scheffler, Joseph Scoren, Matthew Sharp, Jeremy Northam
Production Year: 1977 - Action/Adventure - Director: Clint Eastwood - Original Language: English - Classification: 18 years and over - Starring:Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Pat Hingle, William Prince, Bill McKinney
Action/Adventure - Original Language: English - Classification: 12 years and over - Starring:Jack Ging, Marla Heasley, Lance Legault, Melinda Culea, Mr T, Dwight Schultz, Dirk Benedict, George Peppard, Carl Franklin
Advantages: great visualy, unusual structure, breathtaking pace, great soundtrack, Berlin Disadvantages: schematic characters, lacks substance, pretentious at times
...people Lola meets on her run as well as her own story.
The film has a triadic structure, I would say a dialectical one (after all, it’s a German film….) with each of the 20 minute chunks presenting a different version of the story and leading to completely different conclusion. There is a thought out symmetry here: indeed the thesis/antithesis/synthesis structure is fairly obviously used in the construction of ... ...the storyline to show Lola’s run downstairs and the encounter with the bullterrier-owner. We see that sequence on her mother’s TV (who ignores it) which moves the use of animation from a pure gimmick to something integrated into the story. Split screen is utilized to a good effect to depict telephone conversations of Lola and Manni. The fates of people Lola meets in the streets of Berlin are shown to us in very fast sequences of stills, ... more
I have seen this film described as experimental or avant-garde but, although it is not your average Hollywood action or romance flick (though it incorporates a bit of both); it isn't nine hours in the life of a skyscraper either. In fact, just the opposite. The film is 81 minutes long and has a pace that takes the breath away (considering that the main protagonist spends most of the time actually running, the expression is even more fitting).
But let's start at the beginning. Manni, a minor criminal and the boyfriend of the title Lola, delivers a bunch of stolen Mercedes to a buyer, receives a bag of gems in return, these get replaced with a carrier bag full of cash (a handsome sum of 100 000 Deutsche Marks). Due to a screw-up with transport, Manni travels by U-Bahn and, in a fit of panic at the sight of a police patrol, leaves the bag on the train.
Amazingly, several of the viewer-reviews I have seen referred to a 'drug deal gone wrong'. No, there is not an ounce of powder in sight: we are in mid-90's Berlin and the film is German. Archetypal gangsters and aspiring young criminals deal in stolen cars here (quite a homely touch for your Polish reviewer, really).
So far we are only few minutes into the film. Manni is understandably desperate: he is meeting his gangster-boss in 20 minutes time and he fears death if he doesn't manage to find the money. He phones his girlfriend, Lola, who decides to ask her banker father for help. In order to get to him in time, she runs.
She runs out of the apartment, past her alcoholic mother sipping a morning drink and talking astrology or some other drivel on the phone; she runs downstairs past a sneering guy with a growling bullterrier; across the fountain-adorned yard of the respectable apartment building; out into the streets; across the bridge to the other side of the river. She runs in an even, steady rhythm, to the pounding sound of very suitable German techno (think: Love Parade); with clocks appearing every so often, with Manni sweating in the yellow phone box waiting for Lola; she runs in what is more or less real time; runs through strangely empty streets of Berlin; with only occasional encounters with passers by: a woman walking a baby in a pushchair, a guy on a (stolen) bike, ambulance, workmen carrying a gigantic board of glass, a group of nuns.
Will she get the money from her father? Will she get to Manni’s phone box before he does anything stupid and before his boss appears? Well, I am not telling you that as suspense is one of the main features of the film and I would not like to spoil it for anybody. What follows is thus not a plot spoiler – I am not going to reveal any more plot. But there is a ‘construction’ spoiler coming up, so if you have not seen the film, and would like to view it with a completely fresh eye, please skip to the next three stars.
***
The film, as I said, is 81 minutes long. How is it then possible that the story is played out in real time and at the same time limited by that 12 o’clock deadline? Well, we see it played out thrice: it starts the same and it follows the same outline (the route and the people Lola encounters) but there are subtle changes in what she does at the beginning becoming less subtle as the story progresses. What we see is how very small differences in decisions and little random events can accumulate and result in massive differences in the final outcomes (thus the butterfly effect). This affects both people Lola meets on her run as well as her own story.
The film has a triadic structure, I would say a dialectical one (after all, it’s a German film….) with each of the 20 minute chunks presenting a different version of the story and leading to completely different conclusion. There is a thought out symmetry here: indeed the thesis/antithesis/synthesis structure is fairly obviously used in the construction of the film.
Is it, then, a highly formal meditation on the accidental character of our lives and on the essence of fate? Not only that, there is also a clear progression visible. Each of the outcomes is more desirable than the previous one. In fact, I had a strong feeling that Lola learned from game to game. Game? Yes, the analogy to a level of a computer game is quite clear once you realize that possibility. In a way the film’s power has something to do with denying the inevitable, with being given another chance – like another life in a computer game.
***
The film is directed by Tom Tykwer: stylistically very polished, with several not-so-usual means employed to a good use (as well as for their own sake from time to time, but I didn’t mind).
A short animated sequence is used once in the storyline to show Lola’s run downstairs and the encounter with the bullterrier-owner. We see that sequence on her mother’s TV (who ignores it) which moves the use of animation from a pure gimmick to something integrated into the story. Split screen is utilized to a good effect to depict telephone conversations of Lola and Manni. The fates of people Lola meets in the streets of Berlin are shown to us in very fast sequences of stills, looking like amateur photo album snaps, so quick that realizing what is shown verges on the subliminal.
The camerawork (Frank Griebe) , functional though a bit showy contributes well to the movie experience. The soundtrack of the pounding techno works perfectly at creating the atmosphere.
There aren't many characters in the film and the acting and dialogue is slightly theatrical – a if not to divert from the magic worked by the visual features, pace and music. In fact, the running Lola sometimes seems less a human character than just a graphic motif amongst others.
Franka Potente is gorgeous Lola, passionate and strong if slightly hysterical; Moritz Bleibtreu is Manni, suitably stupid, and childishly macho, rather touching at times but never really important apart from being the raison d’etre for Lola’s run; but let’s face it, depth of character is not the strongest point of the movie and I somehow don’t think it was intended to be.
Verdict
‘Run Lola Run’ is a flamboyant and at times a bit pretentious, at others firmly tongue in cheek exercise in the joys of movie-making. It lacks in substance to some extent so people who look for a thick story with rich characterization would do better to look elsewhere. The musings on random chance and fate are mildly interesting but not particularly new, though the idea of repeated chances is somehow viscerally attractive.
But it is fun to watch, never boring, a visual and structural feast, sporting allusions to other works (sometimes it looked to me just like a spoof of American thriller) and later on alluded to (I couldn’t help thinking that nuns in ‘Amelie’ were the nuns from ‘Lola’). My favourite allusion is less film and more literary - Lola’s scream: a scream that literally shatters glass. This is straight form…….let me keep it here as my quiz question for careful readers.
I enjoyed ‘Run Lola, Run’ it immensely when I saw it in the cinema for the first time, and I liked it when I re-watched it at home recently; in fact it had an added value of reminding me of the part of the world closer to where I come from. It has not dated much so far (it was released in 1998). As usual with films strong on visuals, it is much better to see it in the cinema, but it is enjoyable on a smaller screen as well.
If you decide to see it, and if you are capable of reading (you must be if you are reading this review!), please watch it with subtitles. The English dubbing is awful (not particularly awful, just awful as any dubbing is really) and would definitely detract from the enjoyment of the film.
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This review is dedicated to theediscerning who is bound to see this movie as either a masterpiece or a pile of pretensional drivel. Or is he?
Advantages: Original, fast-paced storytelling, a visceral thrill. Disadvantages: Hard to work out the thinking behind the action.
...a film, the German offering Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt) is an unrelenting assault on the senses that tells the story of twenty minutes - three times. Lola (Franka Potente) receives a call at home from her panicked boyfriend, Manni, an errand-boy for a Berlin gangster; he has mislaid the package he was supposed to be transporting and needs to raise 100,000 Deutschmarks before his boss catches up with him. Fearing for his life, he tells Lola that he ... ...the clock is the story Run Lola Run tells, with each of the three "runs" varying greatly in events and consequences; although there are often only seconds between each one. For instance, whereas on her first run she sprints clear of the dog that growls at her on her staircase, in the second instance she trips and falls - a difference that impacts upon the chance encounters that unfolded the first time around. This structure, showing how minor differences ...
Puggers 17.04.2009 (16.04.2009)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Run Lola Run (DVD)
Advantages: It's a fast-paced, exciting, inventive masterpiece Disadvantages: It's a bit strange; it's German (only jesting)
I only came across Run Lola Run because my favourite episode of The Simpsons, Trilogy Of Errors, contained an homage to this film. You may have seen it; it's the one where they show one day from the perspective of each family member. Lisa is late for her school science fair, so she runs down the street to some techno background music. I subsequently learned that that scene is based on Lola Rennt (or Run Lola Run), a German film from 1998, starring ... ...is to drop the phone, run out of the house and through the streets of Berlin, where she must find the money before Manni takes it into his own hands and robs a supermarket. Along the way, Lola (literally) bumps into a whole range of characters, including a group of nuns, a speeding ambulance and a pane of glass (you can see where that one's heading), a homeless man, and her father, who is having an affair.
Tom Tykwer's film is highly unusual, and ...
l-m-n-o-p 04.08.2006
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Run Lola Run (DVD)
Advantages: Fast, fun and furious Disadvantages: Maybe a little TOO experimental
...what surprised me most about Run Lola Run is just how captivating a movie it is. So it's a German film, with subtitles, but don't let that put you off. The visual style and energy that director Tom Tykwer brings to this picture cannot be underestimated, nor indeed can the lively performance from Franka Potente in the lead role. If ever there was an example of film experimentation, this is it, as Tykwer throws in just about every trick in the book. ... ...suppose Sliding Doors too, but Run Lola Run definitely has its own identity. Although it takes a while to get comfortable with (especially if you don't speak German), Tykwer's style is so well suited to the film that you'll be drawn into Lola's plight very easily. This is thanks in no small way to Potente, who despite having to run along most of the streets of Berlin, still manages to give a convincing and eye-catching performance. Her character ...
TJ-Mackey 22.09.2002
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Run Lola Run (DVD)
Advantages: Great story, shot well, good soundtrack Disadvantages: Made in German, subtitles
...the subtitled version. That's right, Run Lola Run is a movie in German with English subtitles - I know that might put some people off. I don't speak German so when I watched the movie for the first time I was a bit apprehensive, but quickly I was so drawn into the movie that the subtitles weren't a problem at all.
Basically, Lola must get 100,000 marks to Manni in under 20 minutes - or else her boyfriend is dead. The concept of the film is very ... ...Things to know about Run Lola Run:
- It's a short film, running about 80 minutes
- It's in German, but you can select French or English subtitles
- There is some violence in it, and some swears
- It's rated R in the US, 15 in the UK
- Franka Potente plays Lola - she was in The Bourne Identity, Blow, and The Warrior and the Empress
- There is a soundtrack to the movie, with Franka Potente singing some of the songs
- I dyed my hair bright red ...
MissAnthropic 19.02.2003
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Run Lola Run (DVD)
Advantages: minute for minute running, completely and utterley original Disadvantages: nothing
...life, it is happening on Run Lola Run
so it 20 minute for each ending! It has the music throughout
the film and she eventually shows that it supports the
intro to the film. It was talking about time and how
it effects everything and existence. It is also about how
: if you ask a question, you get an answer....which leads
to another question and so forth. It is great.
Also during the different endings, Lola encounters the same people but obviously ... ...into three people in each
segment and each time, it shoots a quick 6 second snapshots
of what is going to happen in each of their futures, under
different circumstances. It is so amazing and original.
I am sure you are getting fed up of me saying that this film is so great and 'original' but its true!!!!
In English it has subtitles which are very accurate to the German dialogue, while in French it was dubbed and often they didn't transalate ...
GrUnGe_GaL 08.04.2001
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Run Lola Run (DVD)
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Advantages: original, makes you think Disadvantages: very violent (i don't mind myself)
BACKGROUND
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I heard about this movie a couple of months ago. As my girlfriend is German, she heard about this movie, and she told me that it was meant to be very good. As I wasn't a fan of "RunLolaRun", I wasn't expecting much, and was a bit reluctant to see it. She ended up buying the DVD, and we watched it...
PLOT
**********
The movie is based on the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted in 1971. A fake prison is reconstituted in a lab, with cells, bars, common showers, and surveillance camera.
People are interviewed to be part of the experiment. They are aware that they will be in a fake prison for 2 weeks and that some of them will be prisonners, and some of them guards.
They are allowed to leave the experiment at any time, but if so, they won't get any money. However, they don't know what they will be ...
Lola has just twenty minutes to find the money for Manni, the love of her life, who will be killed immediately should he fail. Unfortunately there are many different ways of getting it so Lola has to run and run...
Release details
DVD Region
DVD
Studio(s)
SONY PICTURES HOME ENTERTAINMENT; CINRAM LOGISTICS
Original Theatrical Trailer, Filmographies, Commentary, Music Video
Aspect Ratio
1.85 Wide Screen, 16:9 Wide Screen
Sound
Dolby Digital 5.1
Dubbing Sound
Dolby Digital 5.1 English German
Professional reviews
Review
"...The sheer ingenuity of [Tykwer's] gamesmanship is amazing..." -- Rating: A (Entertainment Weekly, pp.106-7, 25/06/1999)
"...A furiously kinetic display of pyrotechnics....Mr. Twyker's visual virtuosity revels in the possibilities here..." (New York Times, p.E10, 18/06/1999)
"...Twyker puts nearly every trick in the cinematic arsenal to stunning use..." (Rolling Stone, p.164, 08/07/1999)
"...Pop-video aesthetics and pumping techno which keeps us breathless....An awesome achievement..." (Sight and Sound, p.52, 01/11/1999)
DVD Description
Set against the gritty urban scenescape of Berlin and a pounding techno soundtrack, RUN LOLA RUN is a frenetic, inventive existential thriller that explores the life-altering impact of seemingly inconsequential actions. Beautiful, hip, and young, poor Lola has but 20 minutes to locate a missing bag containing 100,000 Deutsche marks or come up with the money some other way--if she can't, gangsters are going to kill her boyfriend. A pulse-raising race against time, the film employs a startling array of innovative techniques to present three separate scenarios, all departing from a single split-second decision Lola makes. Franka Patente, who also sings on the soundtrack, is mesmerizing as Lola.
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