The Class of 1999: 'Run Lola Run'
Writer/director Tom Tykwer’s philosophy-tinged thriller exists at the intersection of 'The Matrix' and 'Go.'
1999 was a historically-great year for film and dramatic narrative as a whole. I’m using my 2024 to look back at, reconsider, and celebrate these stories as they all celebrate their 25th anniversaries. I recently re-reviewed Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai; next up on the docket is South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. But first… it’s time for…
Run Lola Run - written & directed by Tom Tykwer - June 18, 1999
Writer/director Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run is a philosophically-tinged action-thriller mash-up of Rashomon, Groundhog Day, Sliding Doors, and video games. After opening in its native Germany in the fall of 1998, it made its U.S. debut at Sundance ‘99, where it wowed critics and industry insiders by demonstrating, for the first time in history, that Germans have a sense of humor. It was released in American theaters that summer.
Made on a budget of less than $2 million, Run Lola Run went on to gross $22 million worldwide; $7.2 million of that came from the United States, where it is, as of this writing, the 48th highest-grossing foreign language film of all time (not adjusted for inflation). It was Tykwer’s fourth film, and only the second for star Franka Potente, but it instantly put them both on the map. On top of that, oh hey wouldn’t ya just know it?, it winds up at the intersection of fellow Class of 1999 alums The Matrix and Go (more on that later).
As Run Lola Run begins, the title character (Potente) receives a frantic phone call from her boyfriend, a small-time hood named Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu). Lola was supposed to pick Manni up after he collected 100,000 Deutschmarks (roughly $55,000 by 1999 exchange rates) on behalf on his boss, a big-time hood named Ronnie (Heino Ferch)… except her moped was stolen, and she failed to arrive on time. Manni, not wanting to be late for his meeting with Ronnie, thus hopped on the U-Bahn with the money in a bag. But Manni put the bag down on a bench for a moment to help a homeless man, Norbert (Joachim Król), who had fallen on the ground… and then, upon seeing a pair of cops board the train, instinctively disembarked, realizing, too late, that he left the bag full of cash behind. Manni believes that Norbert has absconded with the bag, but what became of the money is a moot point: he’s supposed to deliver 100,000 DM to Ronnie in 20 minutes, and if he doesn’t, Ronnie will kill him.
Manni believes that robbing a nearby grocery store is the only way to get the money and save his life, but Lola begs him to wait for her to get there, promising she’ll figure out some other way to procure the necessary funds. Manni promises to hold off on sticking up the grocery store for as long as he can.
Thinking quickly, Lola decides that her best bet to procure the money is her father (Herbert Knaup), a banker. She runs past her mother (Ute Lubosch), who is discussing astrology and flirting with someone over the phone, and out of the apartment. In a brief animated segment, Lola darts down the stairs, running past a neighbor and his growling dog. Lola then runs (and runs, and runs) through the city; along the way, she bumps into a woman pushing a baby in a stroller, interacts with a thief who wants to sell her a stolen bike, inadvertently causes a car accident between a guy named Meier (Ludger Pistor) and three yoked dudes, and distracts an ambulance driver, who consequently narrowly avoids crashing through a pane of glass some workers are transporting across the street.
Lola finally reaches the bank where her father works, disrupting a meeting between himself and his mistress (Nina Petri), who has just told him that she is pregnant. Lola and father argue, and he kicks her out of the bank, revealing that she is not his daughter and that her biological father died before she was born.
With no other option, Lola runs to meet Manni, but doesn’t arrive in time to stop him from holding up the grocery store at gunpoint. She helps him steal the 100,000 marks, but outside, the couple finds armed police waiting for them. Manni tosses the bag full of stolen money in the air. This startles one of the cops, who, in turn, shoots Lola in the chest.
As Lola lies in the street, dying, she flashes back to a post-coital chat with Manni, in which she expressed doubt regarding his love for her. The scene is presented entirely in a single static shot bathed in red light.
Back in the present, Lola protests her death quietly, asserting, “I don’t want to leave.” The entire story then begins again, starting from when Lola left her apartment. This time, there are differences, some substantial, some less so. The neighbor with the dog trips Lola on her way down the stairs, so Lola now runs with a limp; she still crosses paths with the woman pushing the stroller, the bicycle thief, and the ambulance, and she still accidentally causes Meier’s car crash, but she gets to her father’s office later than she did before; as a consequence, her father’s mistress is able to reveal that he is not the father of her unborn child; thus, Lola arrives in the middle of a heated argument between the two, and learns of the affair.
After her father smacks her for insulting his mistress, Lola grabs a gun from the holster of a bank security guard and robs the bank of the $100,000 DM. She runs to Manni, and arrives in time to stop him from sticking up the grocery store… but Manni is run over and killed by the same ambulance from earlier.
As Manni lays in the street, dying, Lola flashes back to a post-coital chat with Manni, in he cast doubt on her love for him. The scene is, once again, presented entirely in a single static shot bathed in red light.
The story now begins again for a third and final time, starting, once more, from when Lola left her apartment. In this version, Lola evades the neighbor and his dog, passes the woman with the stroller, and prevents Meier’s car crash. Consequentially, Meier, who it turns out is on his way to have lunch with Lola’s father, beats her to the bank. Lola arrives just in time to see her father and Meier driving away. Manni, meanwhile, spots Norbert, on a bicycle he bought from the thief, riding around with his money. Manni chases Norbert into traffic, causing a much, much more severe car accident between Meier and the yoked dudes - with Lola’s father in the car no less. Elsewhere, Lola finds a casino, where she quickly win 129,000 marks. She sprints to meet Manni, catching a ride in the back of the ambulance. There, a paramedic is tending to the bank security guard, who is having a heart attack. Lola holds the guard’s hand and stares into his eyes, which seems to cure him somehow.
Lola finally arrives at Manni’s location, just in time to see Manni’s meeting with Ronnie end: Manni traded Norbert his gun for his money back. Everything is resolved, and Lola and Manni are now 129,000 DM richer to boot.
At an appropriately-brisk 80 minutes, Run Lola Run is consistently exciting and fun. Tykwer employs practically every tool available to him, including switching between color and black and white, changing film speeds, shooting portions with a lo-fi digital camera, split screens, impressionistic editing, and the aforementioned animated segments to help the viewer orient themselves within the repeating story, make the relatively low-budget feel considerably larger, and help prevent a movie that’s like 80% a woman running up and down the same streets from ever becoming boring.
Tykwer also excels at expressing internal thoughts in visual kinetic terms, as when the camera spins around Lola while she thinks about who might be able to give her the money, using quick edits to flash upon all the possible candidates, the spiraling shot and its intercut close-ups of potential lenders gradually slowing down as Lola finally settles on her father, foreshadowing the roulette wheel that will later become so important to the protagonist.
Tykwer’s visual verve, and the story’s sense of humor, are what make Run Lola Run so eminently watchable; but the film also has more profound, thought-provoking elements that elevate it above being “just” an amusing thriller.
It’s clear from the start of Run Lola Run that Tykwer wants the audience to think about the narrative philosophically. The movie opens with the camera searching through a large, anonymous crowd, occasionally landing on one of the characters who will reappear throughout the movie (e.g., the woman with the stroller, the bicycle thief, etc.), while an anonymous narrator says:
“Man... probably the most mysterious species on our planet. A mystery of unanswered questions. Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? How do we know what we think we know? Why do we believe anything at all?
“Countless questions in search of an answer... an answer that will give rise to a new question... and the next answer will give rise to the next question and so on.
“But, in the end, isn't it always the same question? And always the same answer?”
The camera finally lands on the bank security guard, who finishes the narrator’s thought - “The ball is round. The game lasts minutes. That's a fact. Everything else is pure theory.” - before kicking a soccer ball into the air.
Tykwer is signaling to the audience that he’s about to ask some heady questions; he’s also warning the audience that he doesn’t have answers.
Every time Lola crosses paths with one of the recurring characters, the next episode in that person’s life flashes before our eyes in a series of still photographs (accompanied by the sound of an old-fashioned flash bulb warming up and cooling down). How their encounter with Lola unfolds will have a butterfly effect on their lives: for example, they may or may not win the lottery, get beat up, or die by suicide, based simply on whether or not Lola bumps into them or says something to them, even if just in passing. In dramatic terms, this would seem to make an argument for determinism: everything that happens to any given person is the direct result of other events.
But the fact that poor Meier keeps getting into car wrecks with the same guys, regardless of whether or not Lola is present at the time of that accident, would seem to make an argument for fate: Meier and those men were simply destined to crash their cars, regardless of whatever else happened to them that day.
And yet, the film also argues for free will. In fact, more than that, it argues for humans as the creators of their own reality: it appears as though Lola gets multiple attempts to save Manni (a true video game mentality) purely through sheer determination.
Run Lola Run does not subscribe exclusively to any one of these seemingly incompatible philosophical tenets: it acknowledges that they’re either all true, or that the universe is simply beyond our comprehension.
Given both its quality and it qualities, it’s not surprising that Run Lola Run not only resonated with audiences, but resonated with other filmmakers from the Class of 1999 - especially the ones who also made kinetic, thought-provoking movies. Go director Doug Liman went to cast Potente as the female lead in his next film, The Bourne Identity, which became a surprise hit in the summer of 2002. Even more notably, Tykwer went on to be a frequent collaborator with The Matrix writer/directors Lilly and Lana Wachowski, with whom he worked on The Matrix Revolutions and The Matrix Resurrections (as a composer), Cloud Atlas (as co-director and co-writer), and Sense8 (as co-director). Additionally, the Wachowskis cast Bleibtreu in the 2008 adaptation of Speed Racer.
Run Lola Run is not spoken of in the same reverential tone as some of the other films from the Class of 1999, but it’s influence cannot be discounted. An array of 21st-century action movies and thrillers owe Run Lola Run a debt, be it a narrative one (Liman’s own Edge of Tomorrow, 2004’s The Butterfly Effect, and 2011’s Source Code all come to mind) or an aesthetic one (Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor’s delightful Crank duology, which are also stylistically elastic and over-caffeinated). If it is one of the more-slight films in this retrospective, well, that just speaks to how goddamn amazing 1999 was: the 36th best movie of the year was still this good.