Top 250 Challenge: 199

Lola Rennt (1998)
Number 141 on IMDb's Top 250

Lola's boyfriend is delivering 100,000 dollars to a mobster, but he has lost the money. Run Lola run. Lola has 20 minutes to come up with the 100,000 bucks or her boyfriend could get hurt. She goes to see her father, but he is unsympathetic to her and says he is leaving her and her mother. Now she has to stop her boyfriend from robbing a grocery store, or should she join in before the police arrive? Hilarity ensues.

Run Lola run. Lola has 20 minutes to come up with the 100,000 bucks or her boyfriend could get hurt. She goes to see her father, but he is unsympathetic. Lola, in desperation, robs the bank her father works at and escapes the police, but can she stop her boyfriend from robbing a grocery store? Hilarity ensues.

Run Lola run. Lola has 20 minutes to come up with the 100,000 bucks or her boyfriend could get hurt. She goes to see her father, but he has just left the bank to go to lunch. Now desperate she ends up at a Casino with $100 placed on black 20. She wins and puts all the winnings on black 20 again. Can she win again and then be able to stop her boyfriend from robbing a grocery store? Hilarity ensues.

Trivia: During shooting, Franka Potente (Lola) could not wash her hair for seven weeks because the red hair color was very sensitive to water and would have got lighter with every washing. The shot where the roulette ball lands on 20 was not a trick shot - the crew simply filmed the ball dropping into the wheel, and it hit 20 on one of their first takes. This film contains about 1581 transitions (edits, dissolves, fades, wipes, etc) in 71 minutes of action (i.e. excluding the credits, and pre-credits sequence). This equates to an Average Shot Length of about 2.7 seconds. Interestingly, the editing is relatively slower towards the end of the film. For most contemporary films, the opposite is the norm.

Wow, what a great, fun movie to watch! The action is accompanied by a driving techno beat that seems to push Lola on. Lola truly runs through most of the movie and that also adds to the tension. The movie is divided into three segments replaying the 20 minutes and slightly changing events to drastically different outcomes. For example in the first 20 minutes, Lola runs in front of a car pulling out onto the street, startling the driver who crashes into the front of another car, in the second 20 minutes, Lola is a little slower and ends up jumping over the hood of the car, startling the driver who hits his brakes, but not in time to stop from hitting the back of a car, in the third 20 minutes, Lola is again a little slower and doesn't make it across the hood, but slides to a stop hanging on to it, The driver is able to stop and doesn't hit the car, it is this car that ends up picking her father up at the bank causing Lola to miss him. The whole movie is like this. It's great!