Seen any of those quickie prime-time specials that show foreign TV commercials? There's one series featuring a bit where they run an ad, then give multiple choices to identify the product or service touted, which has at best a rather obscure connection to the actual imagery.

At first glance, Run Lola Run could be one of those spots, equally appropriate for Adidas, Comedy Central's "Dr. Katz," Power Bar, or Partnership For a Drug-Free America. Following brief opening musings on the nature of time and humanity, and mug-shot credits in which we meet the titular (that's a great word, by the way, and perfectly harmless, but as with "niggardly" one must take care using it these days lest someone take umbrage) crimson-coifed waif and her droopy-eyed boyfriend Menni, the film wastes no time setting about to make you feel windblown.

Menni works as courier for some high-zoot German drug dealers who are not likely to be very sympathetic when he loses DM100,000 (about $50,000) to a homeless man on a train. With only 20 minutes to raise the cash or forfeit his skull, he figures armed robbery is the only option, but Lola persuades him to wait until the last possible minute before hitting a big grocery store, hopefully giving her time to entreat her estranged rich banker daddy for a loan. And her moped's just been stolen -- that's why Menni had to take the train -- so she has to run flat-out the several blocks to his office, encountering a parade of obstacles on the way. When she finally gets there, Daddy doesn't take it well -- "Excuse me, papa, could you and the bank spare a hundred thou so my lover's pusher boss won't put a bullet in his brain?" -- additionally distracted by a confrontation with his pregnant mistress. She storms out, hoping to catch Menni and dissuade him from further crime, but arrives late, and is killed in a shootout with the police.

At which point she promptly wakes up in bed, beginning the whole episode again. And again -- each time taking a few slightly different steps, hoping for a survivable outcome. These aerobic proceedings begin as an exercise -- literally -- in style, but eventually evolve into larger substance. Sure, the theme has been done before -- Groundhog Day, and a couple times just recently, in Sliding Doors and an "X-Files" episode -- but not with such urgency. That stylishness is pretty heady, too; at crucial moments, Lola's quest, unfolding more or less in real time, is wont to jump from reality to animation as she sprints about, making both new and subtly altered repeat encounters with people who, like Christopher Walken in The Dead Zone, impart a vision of their personal future that changes with the minute differences of each physical collision.

Though the dialogue is in subtitled German, Run Lola Run is so visual it's no problem to follow. If you've ever wondered how changing one little thing might affect the rest of your life, this film has a thoughtful moral: always lock up your moped. B+

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