I'll admit it, I played "Run Lola Run" right through to the very end of the closing credits. I'll explain why later.
The film begins with a philosophical question: "How do we know what we think we know? Why do we believe anything at all?" It immediately states an answer: "The ball is round, the game is 90 minutes. That's a fact, everything else is pure theory." In other words, "no reason."
Lola's boyfriend, Manni, lost 100,000 marks belonging to his hoodlum associates. Lola needs to get that amount of money and meet him in 20 minutes, or they'll surely kill him. So she hurries to get there. Along the way, she runs into various people; the film shows flashes of what will happen to them in their future without explanation of how or why.
But things go very badly for her. She is killed, so the events start over, showing a different version. This time, things happen a bit differently, including different outcomes for the people she encounters. Again things turn out wrong, again it starts over, again different results, this time with success for Lola and Manni. There's no reason for it, no different choices anyone made; it's just random. In fact, she turns 100 marks into over 100 thousand in two rounds of roulette at a casino (as if that ever happens when you need it).
The movie is filled with unlikable characters. Manni is a crook, apparently a thief and smuggler. Lola joins him in armed robbery of a grocery in one iteration, then robs her father's bank, holding her father at gunpoint, in another. In the third iteration where things work out, the two behave better, not because they're better people making better choices, but because they simply never had the opportunity to rob anyone.
In between the iterations, Manni and Lola are lying in bed, discussing things that have nothing to do with anything, further underscoring the fact that this is a pointless, meaningless, random, plodding movie, which is philosophically corrupt and only barely entertaining. But the music rocks, which is why I listened to the very end: I didn't want to miss the only thing good about this film.
The film begins with a philosophical question: "How do we know what we think we know? Why do we believe anything at all?" It immediately states an answer: "The ball is round, the game is 90 minutes. That's a fact, everything else is pure theory." In other words, "no reason."
Lola's boyfriend, Manni, lost 100,000 marks belonging to his hoodlum associates. Lola needs to get that amount of money and meet him in 20 minutes, or they'll surely kill him. So she hurries to get there. Along the way, she runs into various people; the film shows flashes of what will happen to them in their future without explanation of how or why.
But things go very badly for her. She is killed, so the events start over, showing a different version. This time, things happen a bit differently, including different outcomes for the people she encounters. Again things turn out wrong, again it starts over, again different results, this time with success for Lola and Manni. There's no reason for it, no different choices anyone made; it's just random. In fact, she turns 100 marks into over 100 thousand in two rounds of roulette at a casino (as if that ever happens when you need it).
The movie is filled with unlikable characters. Manni is a crook, apparently a thief and smuggler. Lola joins him in armed robbery of a grocery in one iteration, then robs her father's bank, holding her father at gunpoint, in another. In the third iteration where things work out, the two behave better, not because they're better people making better choices, but because they simply never had the opportunity to rob anyone.
In between the iterations, Manni and Lola are lying in bed, discussing things that have nothing to do with anything, further underscoring the fact that this is a pointless, meaningless, random, plodding movie, which is philosophically corrupt and only barely entertaining. But the music rocks, which is why I listened to the very end: I didn't want to miss the only thing good about this film.