movie review run lola run

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Run Lola Run

An exhilarating, upbeat journey.

Feb 27, 2006
Jul 17, 2022

Movie that started the wave

perica-43151
Jul 19, 2018

The Story lies in the Details

Jun 13, 2006

A breathtaking, action-packed love story...

Jan 14, 2001

Riveting action, dynamic sound track, and brilliant editing had me hooked from the first frame.

Jun 26, 1999

Fun to watch, but I'd hardly rate it a classic.

May 21, 2001

Technically Stunning

nick_smart85
Apr 13, 2002

So what's the big deal?

Jul 14, 1999

See Lola run

Jul 12, 2005

Fine, tight little movie.

Feb 4, 2001

Best German suspense and action film ever made

Aug 16, 1998

I didn't really care if Lola saved her boyfriend or not

Oct 22, 2003
Aug 23, 2007

One of the best circular narratives!

May 6, 2003

best german film to date

thomas_altmann
Oct 10, 2001

Innovative Film That''s Always Fun To Watch

ccthemovieman-1
Feb 24, 2006

Good stuff!

TreeFiddy53
Feb 8, 2022

An adrenaline-soaked celluloid drug

Feb 14, 2000

Dazzling and stunning thriller with unstoppable action from start to finish

Dec 10, 2012

If At First You Don't Succeed...

Jul 10, 2024

don't believe the hype

Sep 1, 2006

Unbearably exciting handles flair and fury better than any film

Flagrant-Baronessa
Sep 19, 2006

interesting energetic premise

SnoopyStyle
May 16, 2015

I hated this movie. Don't buy the hype

Feb 19, 2000

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Run Lola Run Reviews

RUN LOLA RUN is the kind of film you might see once, whether in the theater or at home, and never forget it.

Full Review | Aug 6, 2024

Run Lola Run is a thinker worthy of discussion and dissection in film classes everywhere.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 29, 2024

Tom Tykwer’s breakthrough, breakneck <i>Run Lola Run</i> set the German filmmaker’s international career in motion in 1998.

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10 | Jul 4, 2024

This is a humdinger...full of kinetic energy, it's unlike anything you've ever seen.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Jun 23, 2024

Tykwer ups the adrenalin with a fast-forward technique that gives instant backgrounders on some of the people Lola flashes by. It's dizzying, almost like having your life flash before your eyes. But it's a rush, just like the movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 21, 2024

The film works like a shot because it gets to the point and does not let up; we get caught up in the urgency of the situation even without having had prior introduction to the protagonist. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 20, 2024

Though it doesn’t deliver a Shyamalanian twist or create the revelatory, encompassing new world of The Matrix, it offers spare, high-velocity action with spectacular style, ornamented with ribbons of philosophical mischief.

Full Review | Jun 6, 2024

“Running time” takes on more than one meaning when it comes to this compact thriller for which Franka Potente probably wishes she could have been paid by the kilometer.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 5, 2022

You’re never bored with seeing the movie start up again, because you want to see how it unfolds this time, what minuscule events will send it spinning off the tracks.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Sep 2, 2022

Pure avant-garde filmmaking, wholly succeeding at presenting innovative editing techniques to lure the audience into a plot as nonlinear and sporadic as they come.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 24, 2020

An exercise in sensory overload.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Nov 4, 2017

...an above-average thriller that’s more (much more) than its admittedly eye-catching gimmick.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 28, 2016

Full Review | Original Score: A | Sep 7, 2011

Teenagers with a taste for the offbeat may enjoy.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 28, 2010

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 18, 2008

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 14, 2007

Run Lola Run takes a few moments to muse about the nature of time and the purpose of man... But its real agenda is the purpose of woman.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | May 26, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | May 5, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 6, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: B | Apr 9, 2005

March 26, 1999 FILM REVIEW 'Run Lola Run': A Dangerous Game With Several Endings Related Articles New Directors/New Films Festival Schedule The New York Times on the Web: Current Film Forum Join a Discussion on Current Film By JANET MASLIN EW YORK -- This year's New Directors/New Films series, sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art, blasts off Friday night with the jolting, futuristic energy of the hit German film "Run Lola Run." It's a furiously kinetic display of pyrotechnics from the director Tom Tykwer, who fuses lightning-fast visual tricks, tirelessly shifting styles and the arbitrary possibilities of interactive storytelling into the best-case scenario for a cinematic video game. Tykwer does this with a vigor and pizazz that offset the essentially empty nature of the exercise. He makes "Run Lola Run" sufficiently hot, fast and post-human to pull that off. For its sheer cleverness and gamesmanship, its altered sense of emotion and meaning in the face of breathless forward momentum, his film makes a startling harbinger of things to come. Tykwer deliberately blows away all traces of the mundane and the familiar, so that not even the closing credit crawl moves in the expected way. "Run Lola Run" opens with typical smashing bravado, as a few vague voice-over speculations about the nature of mankind give way to a strikingly bold image. A crowd milling around suddenly forms the word Lola as the camera shifts from ground level to aerial view, and with that we're off and running. Or Lola (Franka Potente) is, anyhow, in a film that keeps her hurtling forward almost all the time. The setup sounds like something out of a game's rule book: Lola's boyfriend, Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), will be killed if she can't come up with a large sum of money and meet him across town in 20 minutes' time. As Lola takes off, trucking along with a muscular R. Crumb look and distinctive flaming-cranberry hair that sets her off from any crowd, the fun is in the details. There are marking points along her route that will be important later. A visit to her father's office, an encounter between an ambulance and a sheet of plate glass, assorted encounters of the street: all of these will be refracted later in various ways. Meanwhile everything looks as dazzling as possible, like the way the camera watches Lola run past her idle mother, spins around the mother and then zooms in on a television screen where Lola is now running as a cartoon version of herself. ADVERTISEMENT The trip to Manni ends in death, but that hardly carries any weight here. Soon everything is erased and we are back with the flying red telephone receiver that sparked Lola's journey. This time each encounter is somehow different, just different enough to alter the course of fate in playfully profound ways. Tykwer's visual virtuosity revels in the possibilities here, as when he splits the screen between Lola and Manni, then lets a ticking clock approaching zero hour (noon) slide up from the bottom of the image. "What a difference a day makes," the soundtrack croons mischievously, while the destiny of each minor character (shown in rapid-fire flash cuts, a whole lifetime in a matter of seconds) is made utterly different each time. The story eventually replays yet another time, and it takes on new sardonic twists with each new permutation, in a show of creative fireworks that is almost the most remarkable aspect of the film. The real miracle, though, is that Lola (like the filmmaker) seems to run through it all without losing her verve or breaking a sweat. PRODUCTION NOTES: 'RUN LOLA RUN' Written (in German, with English subtitles) and directed by Tom Tykwer; director of photography, Frank Griebe; edited by Mathilde Bonnefoy; music by Tykwer, Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil; set designer, Alexander Manasse; produced by Stefan Arndt; released by Sony Pictures Classics. With: Franka Potente (Lola), Moritz Bleibtreu (Manni), Herbert Knaup (Lola's Father), Armin Rohde ( Schuster), Joachim Krol (Norbert von Au) and Nina Petri (Mrs. Hansen). Running time: 81 minutes. This film is not rated.