Multi-award winning German thriller starring Franka Potente. Lola has twenty minutes to deliver a hundred grand to her boyfriend in order to save his life. Then she has to do it again. And then she has to do it again

　　This massively entertaining and exhaustingly paced thriller is awash with flashy little tricks and cunningly handled conceits. Short, fast and extremely slick, it looks like primetime MTV yet manages to set the argument for free will against endless footage of a really cool chick just, like, running.

The plot itself is dead simple. Manni (Bleibtrau) owes a wad to the mob. Girlfriend Lola (Potente) has to find the cash and get it to him. Director Tykwer has her undertake the same race against the clock three times and in each instance the story has a different outcome. Her father helps. Her father doesn‘t help. She wins at the casino. She doesn‘t win at the casino. She holds up a bank. She doesn‘t hold up a bank.

Set against a relentless techno soundtrack it incorporates animation, slow motion and stills to recreate the speed and buzz of a top-notch video game. Potente spends most of the film‘s eighty minutes pegging it but out of this simple premise Tykwer fashions a gleaming thriller the memory of which far exceeds its, ahem, running time.

　　Verdict
Hyper-kinetic, super-slick, dead cool thriller that goes somewhere fast. Three times.