Better Late than Never on "Run Lola Run"

I recently joined Letterboxd. I like the app. It is good because I can search a bunch of different posts and find movies I want to see but haven't yet. My watchlist is full of movies that I have wanted to watch and other movies that haven't come out yet. The majority of the movies I want to watch are older ones that have passed me by. There are a ton of older movies that, now that I'm older, I want to see. I have never seen a Kirosawa movie. There are a ton of Scorcese movies I've never watched due to my dislike of the movies of his I have seen. There are movies my brothers have talked about for years that I have never gotten around to. I decided to rectify that last weekend. One movie that kept popping up was "Run Lola Run".

I have heard about this movie for years. I believe RD used to talk about it a lot back in the day. I have seen "The Simpsons" episode that is a full parody of the movie. I have seen other people parody it as well. I always knew that it was about a woman running and trying to beat some kind of clock. But I have never watched it from start to finish. That all changed last Friday.

From the first shot, I was all in. This movie is totally awesome. It is one of the coolest things I've seen in a long, long time. For those that may not know, "Run Lola Run" is told in three different parts. The first is through Lola's eyes, the second is through her boyfriend's eyes, Manni, and the third is, spoiler alert, if they both made the right decision in this messed up situation. I liked every single part of this movie. The actor who played Lola was magnificent. She is so good, she owns every single moment she is on screen and, from what I read, the amount of running she was doing and how fast she was going, was a herculean task. I read that she insisted on wearing the Doc Martens her character wore. I also read that she smoked two packs a day. It doesn't show. It was rad to see. I also liked Manni. He did great work with just his face. He acted the hell out of this role, and he didn't have to say too much. What I liked most about this movie was the fate of the "common people" that Lola and Manni would run into. Another thing I liked how the movie would do almost a Polaroid picture break, and then give us some more Polaroids of what happened to these people in each scenario. It was very interesting, and had to be a new technique at the time. I also liked how the movie would switch from animation to real life. It was cool to see, and again, it had to be one of the first movies to do this. I also thought that the throughline story was pretty great. We get to see three different outcomes, and each has their own way to show what could happen. The first two are tragic, and the third is oddly comforting.

If you have never seen "Run Lola Run" I cannot recommend it enough. I'm so happy that I finally saw it myself. 

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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