In the review, I will need to analyze the editing techniques in Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer) and discuss how the techniques are important to the narrative development.

Run Lola Run, originally named Lola Rennt in German is a 1998 German action film, the story begins where a woman attempt to get 100,000 German marks for her mob boyfriend because they accidentally left in in the subway car while delivering a smuggled loot. She has 20 minutes to find the best ways to get the money, and the whole story is about her thinking what would happened if she choose one of those ways to get the money before her boyfriend tries to rob the grocery store beside the phone booth.

In this article, I will be talking about the editing techniques used in this film because it was very well rated by the internet. According to the IMDB website, the film consists of 1581 transitions including edits, dissolves, wipes, fade and etc in 81 minutes, averaging at 2.8 seconds between every transition which makes this a fast paced movie. There are 3 alternative plot and each plot is limited to 20 minutes of story. After watching the movie and looking at some analysis, the continuity in this movie despite having a tonne of editing is superb in terms of timing, music and space.

The transitions along with each and every shot will have to be related in order to maintain the mood and feel of the movie. Tykwer's editing is unique from ordinary films which only have one plot, for his movie, he uses three different plots starting with the same beginning and ended with very different endings, but with the same goal. One of the contributions to continuity is the characters and locations used in the 3 different plots, all of these scene shared at least 3 same locations like the bank Lola's father worked in, the phone booth her boyfriend is standing in, and the scene where his father's friend meets the tough guys.


When talking about film editing pace, there are both slow pace editing and fast pace editing, slow paced editing is used to highlight the crucial moments of the characters and let the viewers take time to focus on what is happening, for example when Lola and her boyfriend were surrounded by the police and they are going to die. Fast pace editing is used most of the time when Lola is running towards a destination, and it intensify the scene along with the music. There is also diegetic sounds in this movie, the scenes where Lola was not talking but the viewers can listen to her voice, stating that is a voice from her mind and the sound of clock ticking reminds the viewers that she is running out of time.

In conclusion, this is a great movie, in terms of editing and story line, I really enjoy the way Tykwer used a technique which packed in 3 different story line, this movie taught filmmakers that they don't have to make a long movie to tell a long story. Action films usually has a linear story line, but this movie uses its own way to tell an action story, it's a movie worth watching.