Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Hello, I must be going: "Run Lola Run"

First, this will be the last post until next week, as I plan to do nothing but watch a lot of college basketball over the next few days. Oh, and eat a bunch of crap. Beer also will be served.

Second .... GODDAMN YOU, TIVO, WITH YOUR TINY HARD DRIVE AND AUTO-DELETING OF MOVIES BEFORE I'VE FINISHED THEM!!!

(Then again, maybe it was my wife recording a bunch of junk that forced my movies into the ether. Nah, it's better I rant at TiVo, since I don't have to share a bed with it. Although if I could, would it be all that bad?)

Excuse my anger, but I had recorded "Run Lola Run" with the express intent of finishing it, once and for all. When my wife -- then live-in girlfriend ... that's right, living in sin, baby -- and I rented it a few years back, we fell asleep midway through and had to return it to the video store without seeing the climax. When "Run Lola Run" was on cable recently, I seized my chance to see what ended up happening to our fire-engine-red-haired heroine.

Our story -- based in Germany, complete with subtitles -- has Lola getting a frantic call from her boyfriend, Manni, who botched some kind of illegal transaction and now needs a lot of money or some crooks will kill him. Lola takes off running, and it's a race to see if (a) she can even get the cash and (b) she can get to Manni before he does something stupid, like rob a store.

What's notable here is that Lola has only 20 minutes, and the movie shows three different versions of her dash for the cash. It's definitely a fun idea, with subtle and not-so-subtle differences among the three scenarios. This extends to the people Lola blows by, with a rapid-fire series of still shots showing what happened to each after crossing Lola's path. That changes with each version, too. Like I said, kind of fun.

Lola is played by Franka Potente, later seen briefly in "Storytelling" (see below post) and "The Bourne Identity." Even if I didn't understand a single word -- well, maybe "Nein" and "Schnell" -- she's well-cast as a punk girl trying to help her man. I wouldn't say she's cute with that bright hair and weird tattoo around her belly-button, but certainly intriguing.

Of course, I'd like to give a careful review of the three different versions of her race. But I drifted off during the third and final act, and when I tried to watch it the next night, poof, it was gone. Now how am I going to find out what happened to Lola and Manni in the end? C'mon, TiVo! The Casio digital watch I had in 8th grade had more memory.

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