Run Lola Run (1999)

"Dazzling.  Janet Maslin, The New York Times
"Exhilarating.  Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
"A stylistic triumph -- swift, witty, consistently dazzling to behold!  Stephen Farber, Movieline
"Stunning.  Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

Editor's Note 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 Potente, who also sings on the soundtrack, is mesmerizing as Lola. Winner of the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival; Best Film, Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Director at the German Film Awards; 1998 Bambi Award; and the Golden Space Needle Award for Best Film at the Seattle International Film Festival.

	Franka Potente
	Herbert Knaup
	Moritz Bleibtreu
	Nina Petri
	Frank Griebe - Cinematographer
	Tom Tykwer - Director
	Franka Potente - Musical Score
	Reinhold Heil - Musical Score
	Stefan Arndt - Producer
	Tom Tykwer - Screenplay

Sight and Sound
"...Pop-video aesthetics and pumping techno which keeps us breathless....An awesome achievement..." 11/??/1999 p.52

Rolling Stone
"...Twyker puts nearly every trick in the cinematic arsenal to stunning use..." p.164

Entertainment Weekly
"...The sheer ingenuity of [Tykwer's] gamesmanship is amazing..." -- Rating: A 06/25/1999 pp.106-7

New York Times
"...A furiously kinetic display of pyrotechnics....Mr. Twyker's visual virtuosity revels in the possibilities here..." 06/18/1999 p.E10

Premiere
".,..RUN LOLA RUN kicks off with an outrageous visual motif....then it spends the remainder of its tight 80 minutes topping itself..." 06/01/1999 p.24

Los Angeles Times
"...Inventive....LOLA's music is perfectly suited to the film's aims and just about addictive in its throbbing, insinuating rhythms..." 06/18/1999 p.F2

Chicago Sun-Times
"...It's an exercise in kinetic energy, a film of nonstop motion and visual invention..." 07/02/1999 p.32

Ultimate DVD
4 stars out of 5 -- "A pulse-pounding and anarchic thriller....It's a short and sweet premise, and one that replays in different variations as time resets and Lola follows a different succession of cause and effect." 05/01/2008 p.83

HBO On-Line 9 of 10
Run Lola Run is a gimmick movie, sure, but it has the good sense to stay focused, keep moving and not overstay its welcome. Running an economical 81 minutes, Lola, a breathless import from Germany, shows little fat. You wouldn't either if you ran as much as Lola does. Franka Potente plays Lola, a punky fraulein with Raggedy Ann-red hair. Her boyfriend Manni has lost a bag containing a lot of money belonging to his boss, a tough, pay-or-die gangster, who doesn't want to hear any excuses. Lola must come up with the dough in 20 minutes or start looking for a new Manni. The director, Tom Tykwer, visualizes this simple enough scenario in three alternative versions. Playing fast and loose with time, Lola runs uptown, downtown and crosstown in an effort to scrape together the DM 100,000 to save Manni's life. Lola is one of those "what if" movies, in the same vein as the less successful Sliding Doors, replaying the same story in decidedly different ways. It isn't especially deep or meaningful in character development or social relevance, but its aerobic sensibility will keep you pleasantly pumped as its 81 minutes fly by. - Jim Byerley

Philadelphia City Paper 10 of 10
[When in theaters,] Run Lola Run was set to go up against the unstoppable juggernaut of Wild Wild West. Sure, it's just some tiny German movie starring people no one's ever heard of, but Run Lola Run has something all Will Smith's megabucks can't. It has cool. In concept, if not setting, Lola is a lot like an old Twilight Zone episode. Cadmium-haired Lola (Franka Potente) has 20 minutes to find 100,000 marks, get across town and meet her boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), or else he dies... Since the movie is 80 minutes long, it's not giving anything away to reveal she doesn't quite make it the first time, and when she fails, the film resets itself and Lola is back at the beginning, getting Manni's fateful phone call all over again. She tries again, she fails again. On to round three. What makes Lola more than a punk rock-inflected X-Files has nothing to do with plot and everything to do with aesthetics. From the moment the film cranks up its pulsing techno score, it's clear we're not in Hollywood anymore. Once Lola has started her everlasting sprint, the music runs almost without stopping for the next 70 minutes. Even when the volume drops to allow us to hear the film's few exchanges of dialogue, an incessant tick-tick-tick keeps time underneath. Even when the movie reluctantly concedes to a bit of exposition, the music is so loud and so seductive you can barely follow the subtitles, which is exactly how director, writer and co-composer Tom Tykwer wants it... What makes Lola so invigorating is its sheer sense of cinematic adventure. Tykwer may be breaking rules just to break rules... There could be more method to his madness, more purpose to his rule-breaking, but there's something inarguably exhilarating about having the history of cinema crammed into 80 minutes, or at least watching someone try. Lola is the kind of iconoclastic, preconception-shedding movie that a filmmaker only gets to make once in his career; any hint of repetition in his next movie would be merely pathetic. But one Run Lola Run is all you need. And besides, your parents will hate it. - Sam Adams