Run Lola Run (1998)-"R"

Run Time:80 minutes

4 stars out of 4

Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run is an intense and fascinating look at what starts as a very bad day, but minute changes in just a matter of only 20 minutes completely change the ending for three drastically different endings to the same beginning. Lola (Franka Potente) is a German girl in love with her boyfriend, Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), who happens to be involved in operations for a crimelord. He loses the money on the train, and Manni sees it taken by a homeless man as the train pulls away, but it is too late. Manni's boss is a hardcore gangster, cruel and paranoid, and will definitely kill or badly hurt Manni right away, once he finds the money is gone. Lola gets called by the frantic Manni, and has to find a way to get him 100,000 marks in 20 minutes, before his boss comes to pickup the money. This movie would only be 20 minutes long, except Tykwer makes three different endings, changed by tiny differences in the way Lola reacts or starts off on her quest for money. Along the way, she encounters people that have their lives altered in amazingly large ways, each time in a different way, just by seeing or talking to Lola in the course of that 20 minutes. Set to a pounding techno and electronica soundtrack, coupled with the fast-paced action of Lola sprinting down the street, and cars crashing, the mood is incredibly intense and involving. Franka Potente is a fantastic actress, with her fear, rage, and sadness seeming incredibly real. I cared so much about what happened to the characters, felt the pounding intensity of the plot so much, and was so intrigued by the three different endings to the same story, that this movie spoke to me in a very powerful way, making me wonder what small things that I might have done that could have drastically and irreverisbly changed someone else's life, or my own life. The idea itself is so fascinating, that I really don't think that Tykwer needed to do much to attract an interested audience. Needless to say, I think that this film is definitely worth seeing and thinking about, and I highly recommend it.