Berlin. Lola receives a phone call from her boyfriend Manni: after a deal, he was supposed to deliver 100,000 Deutsche Mark to his boss, but he lost the bag in the metro train. He has 20 minutes to find the money or his boss will kill him. Lola decides to run to her dad, a banker, and ask 100,000 DM from him, but he refuses. Manni decides to rob a shopping store, but the police show up and accidentally shoot Lola... 2nd option. Lola runs, takes a gun and her dad as hostage and robs the money from the bank. Manni runs towards Lola, but an ambulance van runs him over... 3rd option. Lola runs and invests all her money into a casino roulette. She screams and her sound causes her to win the jackpot. Manni finds the homeless man who stole his money and retrieves it, and is thus able to give it to his boss. Manni and Lola meet and now have a surplus of money.
One of the most famous and best German movies from the 90s, ''Run Lola Run'' is built around the iconic cinematic character of a red-haired girl in a teal t-shirt running across the street, and even though it is just a stylistic exercise in a blend of action and experimental film, it works marvelously smooth until the end. The story is simplistic—the title heroine has 20 minutes to find 100,000 DM for her boyfriend—but it is the way the director Tom Tykwer directs all this that makes it inventive, creative and unusual. He uses various cinematic techniques to make the film tantalizing: animated segments; split screen; match cut; over the shoulder shots; slow motion or the fact that the story is told in three different alternatives all help this movie to look modern and hip. In the opening act, the narrator says: ''In the end, isn't it always the same question. And always the same answer?'' Then the main cast is introduced through some sort of gallery of mughshots. As Lola hears about the pinch her boyfriend found himself in, the camera rotates 360 degress around her as she thinks of all the people who could help her, until the camera stops and she consolidates the one person who could be the main candidate: dad. Cue to a short clip of her dad looking into the camera, but then shaking his head when he hears that.
Even more peculiar, as Lola runs into some people on the street, a quick montage of stills shows what will happen to them in the future—in one such example, Lola runs by a cyclist, and the montage shows him being beaten up by thugs, then meeting a nurse in the hospital, and finally getting married to her. Tykwer creates a pace that is furious, but never aggressive—instead, it is optimistic, happy, funny and effervescent. Franka Potente is excellent as the leading heroine, proving that she can be not only agile, energetic and powerful, but also humane and emotional at times. For instance, she comes off as very fragile when her father admits she is his ''cuckoo's child'' or when she has a wonderful random flashback moment with her boyfriend Manni in bed: ''Because you are the best.'' - ''The best what?'' - ''The best woman.'' - ''Of all and all the women?'' ''Run Lola Run'' certainly is a patchwork with several excessive and superflous moments that were inserted just there for the random sake of it. And the resolution of the third story revolving around the casino is unconvincing and a bit too naive. However, it shows such a wonderful playfulness in including all those different, disparate elements that ultimately nothing else matters besides such a wonderful playfulness.
Grade:+++
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