Run Lola Run-A Fast-Paced Film That Oozes Style

Throughout its entire runtime, Run Lola Run oozes styles. With its techno soundtrack, rapid cutting style, extreme closeups, strange camera angles, and even moments of animation, every minute of its 80-minute runtime bursts with style. It doesn't always work, as this in-your-face style could be a bit much, particularly early on in the film. But when the style works, the film looks and moves like very few films I've seen. 

It's all in favor of a story all about time. It's a film with a unique relationship with time. The film understands that, both in life and in its story, time is finite, so it mines tension out of that fact to make its relatively brief runtime consistently tense and engaging. The film also plays around with time by placing the same sequence of events three different times with different outcomes, which shows how small events lead to drastically different consequences. 

The film also has a unique perspective on life. Throughout the film, Lola passes by various people, and we see brief glimpses of their lives, showing that the world is filled with different people living rich, interesting lives. The film shows how something as simple as someone bumping into another can lead to a sequence of events that can change a person's life. It's a film fascinated with the idea that every choice, from the big to the small, can lead to a butterfly effect of consequences. 

The film loses me in its ending, which takes what was, for the most part, a somewhat grounded story aside from the whole playing the same sequence of events three different times with different outcomes aspect of the story and ends it in a way that was a tad too heightened and unbelievable in my eyes. And as I said, the film's frenetic onslaught of style didn't always work for me. 

But as a whole, Run Lola Run is such a high-energy film that pumps so much pure style and thematic depth in only 80 minutes. Through its sequence of events played out three different times with different outcomes, the film contains so many fascinating ideas of life, time, and consequence in a movie that features relatively few locations. The film, as a whole, is consistently high-energy and tense but also surprisingly life-affirming, showing how life can change instantly for anybody, be it through active choice or pure chance.

Now Streaming on Prime Video in the U.S