RUN LOLA RUN

ALL HAIL the coolest character in the entire history of European cinema! The filmic equivalent of a methamphetamine and Red Bull cocktail, the dazzling Run Lola Run is a breathless, kinetically charged race against time which leaves the viewer dazed, stunned and enthralled, and is without doubt the most original and unforgettable foreign-language flick to invade our screens in many years. I saw it a month ago, and it still shoots through me from time to time. I urge everyone else to go and see it without delay.

Few films in living memory have been as straightforward and single-minded, and the plot is simplicity itself. The film's heroine, a super-fit, punkish young thing named Lola, has twenty minutes in which to raise 100,000 Deutschmarks in order to save her lover's life. Her boyfriend's panicked, anguished phone call kick-starts her into life, and from that point, there's no stopping her. Played with a superhuman combination of energy and grace by the unbelievably cool Franka Potente, Lola comes on like a wondrous mixture of Beatrice Dalle and Carl Lewis, sprinting virtually non-stop throughout the film's entire 80-minute duration, as she hunts relentlessly for the cash as if chased by the devil.

Cleverly structured, the film opts to use three different outcomes to illustrate the multiplicity of possibilities, and echoes Rumble Fish in its constant recurring use of clock-faces - but it's not noticeably intended as a cerebral piece of film-making, more an all-out visceral assault on the senses, and one which almost defies belief, such is the pure magnitude of its gut-level power. Go see now.

RATING: HHHHHH