Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu, Herbert Knaup, Joachim Król, Armin Rohde

A young woman in Germany has twenty minutes to find and bring 100,000 Deutschmarks to her boyfriend before he robs a supermarket.

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88% liked it

123,944 ratings

Critics

92% liked it

79 critics

R, 1 hr. 21 min.

Directed by: Tom Tykwer

Release Date: June 18, 1999

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DVD Release Date: December 21, 1999

Stats: 7,749 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (7,749)


  • September 14, 2009
    One of the best films of the 90's, I totally fell in love with Franka Potente after this. I remember the hype when it was first released, I still hear people incorrectly state that it's a 10 hour long art film that just shows a woman continually running. Idiots. This is a great f...( read more)ilm and one of my favourites.
  • August 27, 2009
    Lola Rennt is definitely in my top ten favourites. Anyone and everyone in the 21st Century can relate to at least one element of this film. Whether it be in from the family relationship perspective e.g. alienated someway by your parents, the feeling of being shut out, or the feel...( read more)ing of wanting hold onto someone so desperately that you'll do anything for them in order to try and stay with them. But surely the most common theme throughout this film is the essence of TIME. How TIME controls everything and no matter what the normal human being does, we cannot stop it, alter it, or change its course. Time has a knock on effect on the series of events that follow. Ever missed a bus on the way to work, thus you were late for work, imagine the most extreme circumstances and that you were fired for being late, and you were late because you missed the bus and the thought that comes into your head?' If only...' And this chain reaction is exactly what Tykwer is trying to defy. Time. Time and fate. By the end of the film Lola is in control of her own fate. Each time she meets someone on her journey she changes his or her fate.

    A weird and wonderful twist of make-belief through use of a fantastic melange of cinematic techniques, like a timeless bubble. Is it a music video, a computer game, or a 'groundhog' type film? It's all free for interpretation. Tykwer put a lot of thought into the use of medium to keep the audiences attention, to convince them that this is a mixture of make-belief and reality. Shown through the use of cartoons verse hand held camera, photographic evidences verses red scenes (reflection time). Possibly we believe by the end of the film?if Lola can change time, change a sequence of events, can we?

    This is a film that I never tire from. Each time I watch it I notice something that I didn't see the first time. The concept of time, its power and our destiny grows stronger, spinning round and round in my head.

    Tick-tock, tick-tock.
  • August 27, 2009
    A young woman receives a phone call from her boyfriend telling her that if he doesn't get 100,000 Deutchmarks within 20 minutes he's a dead man. It tells of the consequences of the phone call in 20 minutes of real time three times over, each containing a slightly differing timeli...( read more)ne, thus showing how minor incidents or coincidence can have a massive knock on effect to not only your life, but those around you. Run Lola Run is very much a product of its time; the techno soundtrack, grunge fashion and fascination with the mathematics of probability (ie "the butterfly effect") all reek of the 1990s, but Run Lola Run still feels strangely fresh, probably because of its brisk, no-nonsense pace and 75 minute running time meaning it never gets too caught up in pretentious navel gazing. I could have lived without some of the directorial affectations that made it feel a little too much like a music video in places, and the coincidences are of course extremely unlikely, but the urban crime element gives it a Luc Besson-esque flavour that makes for an entertaining and original experience.
  • March 17, 2009
    Tom Tykwer is the visionary that most filmmakers only dream of being. This is a work of true originality, manipulating time and space as it ponders over the many possibilities that can result from a simple choice. Short and swift, Run Lola Run is a masterpiece, and is destined ...( read more)to be one of the most noteworthy films of this decade, if not the last few decades.
  • February 3, 2009
    German is the language (other than English, of course) that I come closest to understanding without aid, though not enough to read or listen to it and fully understand. Part of this comes from an ear for similarities in sound that can tie words together, part comes from English's...( read more) Germanic origins and a fair bit of it comes from taking some German classes in high school. It was in one of these classes that a friend of mine recommended to the teacher (without respect and appreciation for him as a person but a complete refusal to acknowledge his taste) this movie, talking it up quite a bit. I'm wary of people with pretension-oriented taste, but at the time was a lot more open to it, wishing to rise, intellectually, above the dross of the still-alien environment of a new area and group of peoples and tastes after the first move of my life. I didn't get around to watching it until now, though, almost eight years later.

    Lola (Franka Potente) is a brightly-dyed redhead in Germany who receives a call from her boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) where she apologizes for being late to meet and pick him up, after their moped was stolen. Manni is not paying much attention to her explanations, clearly distraught. He eventually cuts through Lola's increasing concern to declare the trouble. In his surprise and confusion at the absence of the usually reliable Lola, he managed to lose the bag he had gone out to pick up--a bag that contained 100,000 DM. He has 20 minutes until he is supposed to deliver it, and if he doesn't he will be killed. Lola tells him to relax, that she will think of something and be there in that twenty minutes. Manni insists that this isn't solution enough and plans to rob the Bolle grocery store across the street from the phone booth he's calling from. Lola quickly runs through the people she knows mentally to decide who can help her. She settles on her father (Herbert Knaup) and begins to run, having only twenty minutes to get 100k DM out of him and get to Manni. Her father refuses, angry at the interruption of his conversation with mistress Jutta Hansen (Nina Petri), and informs her that she is a "cuckoo's egg" (a "changeling" effectively, but more in the insemination stage than the post-natal one). Unsure what else to do, Lola runs to the Bolle to stop Manni, but he has already begun his robbery. The arrival of the police leads to an unpleasant solution to their problems. Lola is left thinking of a time where Manni told her she had a choice--and she's suddenly back in her apartment, the phone's receiver hitting the base after Manni's call, her run re-started.

    It's actually kind of amusing how I responded to this film. As with most, I avoid knowing anything of the plot at all if I can before I go in. When the film starts out as a heavily edited music-video like experience heavy on the emotional responses of Manni and Lola, I was not terribly interested and felt let down. When the film took its bizarre turn and re-started, it caught my attention and held it through the rest of its run. The hasty feel of the opening sequence and the fanatically constant edits make more sense in light of their context in the entire film. Now the animated sequences (yes, really!) make sense, as do the curious "flash forwards" we see of the people Lola interacts with on her run. Now they don't seem like cheap, stylistic gimmicks so much as wildly stylized (the mental image of the brightly coloured mohawk of a stereotyped 1980s punk is what I associate this with--excess and unnatural choices, but fitting for what they are attached to) elements that fit in with the overall feel of the film and its commentary on the world. The opening sequence of quotes from a famous German football (excuse me, soccer) coach and T.S. Eliot also come into focus--this film is almost a sonnet to chaos theory in some parts, with the "flash forward" elements differing wildly just by the varying times and ways--and these differences are usually small--that she interacts. A woman alternately has her children taken by social services, wins the lottery and finds religion. Lola and Manni continually meet different fates, finding or not finding the money necessary.

    I've seen Potente before, after this film was recommended to me but before I ever saw it. I have seen (and own) the two Anatomie horror movies (also from Germany), the first of which she stars in and the second she makes a guest appearance in. This was (as is often the case, alas, when horror is involved) a better chance for her to strut her stuff, though. It's not an incredibly complex role (with an awful lot of it consisting of running endlessly), but the points at which it is required, Potente lives up to the emotional demand of Tom Tykwer's writing and direction, with massive anxiety and frustration when dealing with the financial needs of her soon-to-be-late boyfriend, and an easy transition into hurt when she finally stumbles into her father's office at the wrong time and finds out who he's speaking to (and what about). The replacement of her fear for Manni's life with her personal hurt follows perfectly, as does her vengeful re-evaluation of needs and circumstances that follows it. Most impressively, though, she manages to make the instances of memory in alternate stories from their predecessors just subtle enough that they are still visible but not definite--present for certain and yet questionable.

    I'm amused by the discussions of "right" and "real" endings for the film, which tells the story of Lola's run three times. It's clear that there is no such thing as either, with no actual ending to the film at all, no real definitive run of events. It's entirely possible the final sequence is the story that was "settled on" by this film's reality, or that all three exist simultaneously or that none do or any number of other explanations. But Tykwer doesn't portray this as a Groundhog Day sort of plot, with Lola needing to "correct" the day after multiple attempts. There's no feeling that the universe is resetting things for her, nor that she is choosing to re-write them. There is a suggestion that the re-boots are in some way accepted by Manni and Lola, but it's not emphasized in a way that tells us we are moving through possibilities to a "right" or "correct" one. Certainly the inane assumption that these are deathbed fantasies is an interpretation based on far too many viewings of films that clearly define such meanings for their respective plots. This one doesn't seek to define specific reality so much as explore and elaborate on possibility, to show what could be, what might have been, what might be, and maybe, just maybe what has been. But it doesn't matter which is which--all are equally true and false because it's about the idea of the differences, not about the comparison between their details.
  • February 4, 2010
    This movie would have been absolutely thrilling had I been watching it 10 years ago. As it stands today, the once edgy concept, pop animation, and the German techno music pumping throughout the film seem dated, but not enough to inspire a sense of nostalgia in the viewer. But wha...( read more)t saves the film is the story and it's intriguing characters. It's easy to get involved in Lola's struggle to put things right, and the story's twists and turns add to the character's development while also making for exciting viewing. A good 1990's time capsule.
  • February 4, 2010
    The movie plays like a video game, even with a reset button.
  • January 29, 2010
    Convoluted in the way that made Tarantino a legend. Das is Good.
  • January 24, 2010
    This is a very unique german movie. I would recommend it. there is a lot of repeating but it is interesting!
  • January 18, 2010
    Espectacular puesta en escena...

Critic Reviews


January 1, 2000
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

A film of nonstop motion and visual invention. full review

January 1, 2000
David Edelstein, Slate

Run Lola Run is more than the sum of its gimmicks: It has a real worldview. full review

View more Run Lola Run (Lola rennt) reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

Comments


  • oakjon
    October 9, 2008
    My only critisim about this movie is the soundtrack....i dont get why a tribal/jungle type song is played half way though it
  • zododay54
    February 27, 2008
    ES UNA PELICULA FANTASTICA MUY ORIGINAL. CON SUS DIFERENTES FINALES. ES GRANDIOSA.
  • embrianna1281
    May 4, 2007
    Beautiful Alternative ending movie. Fast, fun, and flirty. Franka is amazing! Music fit so well, actors perfect... Thanks to my Film Lit class.. I am forever in love with this movie!!
  • Username626
    June 21, 2006
    I love this movie some things about it are just classic. I owe my love of the movie due to the repetitive showing of it in my high school german class. We must have watched it about 40 times over four years, 60 if you include the times we only watched parts.

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Run Lola Run (Lola rennt) Trivia


  • Name Lola's boyfriend in Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt).  Answer »
  • In "Run Lola Run" (originally 'Lola Rennt'), Franka Potente is running through downtown   Answer »

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