GREAT READS

Run Lola Run

Tom Tykwer

If you had twenty minutes to come up with approximately $50,000 to save someone's life, could you do it?

This is the premise of German film Run Lola Run, winner of 26 awards. Lola receives a frantic phone call from her boyfriend Manni who has just lost money on a train. A lot of someone else's money. As if that weren't problem enough, Manni is supposed to deliver that money in twenty minutes to a mob boss who is unlikely to have a sense of humor. What will Lola do? She could try to beg her father for money. She could rob a bank. She could try her luck at the casino. But how will she decide which option is the most likely to save her boyfriend?

We the audience watch Lola run through each possible scenario, all of which are in some way determined by a small interaction she has with a man and his dog in her apartment building stairwell. While we're sweating alongside Lola to see how everything will turn out, we're also invited to think about the nature of fate and how little things can make a big difference.

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