Most critics warm to Run Lola Run, and the praise clusters in one place: its energy. Reviewers describe a film that runs three variations on the same twenty minutes and never stops moving, and they credit Tykwer’s editing, the camera loops and the techno score for keeping it going. Franka Potente’s performance is singled out again and again, several critics noting that the film keeps its sympathy for Lola even when the style threatens to swamp her. A few also find something under the noise: chance, fate and how small changes ripple outward.
The reservations concern what all that motion is for. Time Out calls the film shallow and contrived, though it likes Potente, and The Guardian goes further, comparing it to a pop video whose three storylines undermine one another. The spread is otherwise narrow; the lone outright dissent sits well below a largely admiring field, and even the mixed notices concede the ingenuity of the structure.