Director Tom Twyker
Stars Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu, Herbert Knaup, Armin Rohde, Joachim Krol, Nina Petri
Certificate 15
Running time 80 mins
Made Germany, 1998

THE energy and exuberance of Tom Tykwer's film overcomes any doubts about the content being trite. It is a fable, shot like a pop video, with a sexy soundtrack and a henna-haired heroine racing through the streets to save her man from certain death.

Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) rings Lola (Franka Potente) from a call box. He's freaking out. Working as an apprentice courier for a drugs baron, he made the drop and then lost the loot. He left it - 100,000 marks - in a bag on a subway train. If he doesn't have an equivalent sum in his hand in 20 minutes, when the gang expects to collect, he's toast.

Lola loves Manni. She'll do anything for him. Right now, she has less than half an hour to prove it. She starts running. First stop, dad's place -- the bank. Second stop, God knows.

Tykwer is a 34-year-old self-taught German filmmaker, who believes that the camera should be used to enhance visual experience. He plays all kinds of tricks, not all of which are successful. He borrows the Groundhog Day idea of second and third chances, so that when one attempt fails, here comes another, and another.

He pulls it off, against the odds, by sheer strength of personality. Potente must have run a few marathons by the end of the movie and still looks capable of kicking the bowel solids out of anyone who stands in her way.

On the Chinese meal method of critical appraisal, Run Lola Run rates highly. Half an hour later, you want more. Tykwer works on instinct and adrenalin. "I always start with the image," he explains. "A woman running." You have to be good to make something this simple fly. He is good.

The Wolf