Run Lola Run
Action movies, hey? What kind of reaction do you get from watching action movies? Do you find them exhilarating or derivative? Do you find them necessary or money grabbing movies? Are you pro Die Hard or more about story and development? Are you style or substance?
There are a few questions you have to ask yourself; these are the ones I constantly ask. After all, growing up and not being a teenage boy, action movies never interested me. Come to think of it, neither did romantic comedies.
(I like stuff like this.)
Ok. So I wasn’t a big fan on either. For me, movies are always about telling a story and for some reason I was under the false illusion that it had to be filled with complexity, twists and character development. After all, the most blood, gun shot and action filled feasts I stuck my teeth into revolved around Tarantino.
So when delving deep into the world of cult, I happened upon Run Lola Run and when I heard “style over substance,” I was a bit dismayed. But let’s just say, I have been taught a very valuable lesson on how to make an enjoyable, slick movie without having to ache a few brain cells.
Run Lola Run (Lola Rennat, 1998) is a premise as simple as they come. Manni is a low level gang member who accidentally misplaces 100,000 marks on a train after a deal. Panicked, he phones his girlfriend Lola under the notion that if his boss found out, he would be a dead man. Lola, not wanting to see her boyfriend gunned down, embarks on a 20 minute quest to get the money somehow. The film is split into three runs; each with different scenarios and different endings centre around the same journey as Lola tries to save Manni.
Run Lola Run is a short movie. After all, it is only 76 minutes long with each run last around 25 minutes. Instead of that being bad, it actually brings a sense of exhilaration to the movie. After all, Lola only has 20 minutes to save Manni so we follow the story and time frame with heart pulsing adrenaline. And as this film is about so little and filled with a lot of repetition; if the movie lasted any longer, it would become irritating really quickly. Here, Tom Tykwer cuts the movie just right.
This movie is all about the imagery and the style. Everything from Lola’s short red locks bouncing as she runs to constant spirals (an homage to Vertigo, by the way,) the film is definitely a visual feast. Even cartoons are spliced into scenes and you don’t question it, you accept it as a quirk of the film. And past conversations between Manni and Lola are steeped in red; does it symbolise death? Love? Passion? Blood? Who cares, it just looks incredible. Tykwer has thought about every detail down to the last insect crawling off screen and it all effects that drumming noise inside you.
Run Lola Run is an exercise in the “Butterfly Effect” theory. As each run commences, every different action Lola takes there is a separate reaction. As she runs, she bumps into different people and Polaroid’s are shown depicting their future. With each run and each little things that happen, Lola’s and those people’s futures change. It’s a small rock in a ripple and you aren’t shown it in great detail, but the flashes are just as effective.
Run Lola Run is bold and fresh. Even with the Nineties pounding all the way through it with a trance soundtrack, Run Lola Run is awesome even now. There is not much more I can say because it is truly a film you have to watch. And not because it is some epic yarn or the ending will blow you away, but because it is simple, daring and vastly entertaining.
TTFN
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