Product: Run, Lola, Run [VHS] (1999)
Rating: 5.0
Lola and the butterfly effect
Tom Tykwer must've been hopped up on seven pots of Cuban coffee when he wrote the screenplay to RUN LOLA RUN. It's a nervy, jolting 1998 German thriller that hurtles like a runaway train. It's packed with urgent, kinetic moments. It's goaded by a pulsing techno score. It ambushes you with an unusual plot twist a third into it. It won the 1999 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award and plenty of other awards, so it can shout that from the rooftops.What ever happened to Franka Potente? She'd amassed so much cachet after her electrifying performance here, I'm surprised I haven't seen her more on-screen since. RUN LOLA RUN doesn't ef around. It right away establishes the two leads and the story's central conflict. Potente plays "Lola," a redheaded whirling dervish of a girl who dashes off to rescue her frantic boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) who only has 20 minutes left to recover the 100,000 German marks that he'd lost, and then hand that over to his boss... his very testy mob boss. You wonder what an ordinary girl like Lola can do. I mean, besides run really fast and with arm-pumping abandon. One third thru the film, when things seem at its bleakest, maybe she'll surprise you. Because the thing that happens, I think she wills it into happening.***Hey now, SPOILERS alert for this paragraph!!*** Some say that this film is comprised of three parallel realities that showcase the same characters. Me, I prefer to regard RUN LOLA RUN as a time travel story, because it's cooler that way and it presents a stronger connective tissue. Sort of more12:01than, say,Sliding Doors. RUN LOLA RUN tweaks your senses with some metaphysical themes: free will versus determinism, pure chance versus conscious manipulation of events (see Lola's actions in the casino)... In each of Lola's run, she encounters various passers-by and demonstrates that even the most incidental contact can have far-reaching consequences. I really dig the flash-forward sequences as we learn, in quick-hitting snapshots, what befalls those passers-by, dependent on how their run-in with Lola went. Lola gets three do-overs, and each one presents a different outcome for one and all. That butterfly must be getting tired, flapping its wings so much.Artsy yet unpretentious, visually arresting and generating a frenetic energy, RUN LOLA RUN exhilarates. It makes me not resent reading foreign sub-titles. It makes me want to see more of Franka Potente, if only she would do more movies I had heard of. I mean, there's this one and then the Jason Bourne movies. I may have to tune in to her new show on BBC America, COPPER.The DVD's bonus stuff:- Audio Commentary (in English) by Franka Petente and director Tom Tykwer- Music Video featuring Franka Petente's vocals- Talent Files - brief bios and selected filmographies for Tom Tykwer, Franka Petente, and Moritz Bleibtreu- Theatrical Trailer for RUN LOLA RUN