The opening moment, and perhaps the film's most pivotal one, is fleeting: Running down the stairs from her apartment, Laura passes a young neighbor with her dog, and the film cuts to animation. This encounter is repeated three times: the second time, the dog's owner trips her and makes her fall, and the third time, he leaps over her outstretched legs. As Laura runs through the city, she passes other strangers, and occasionally we see rapidly edited, parenthetical sequences of “flash-forward” stills showing how that person's life has changed as a result of their brief encounter with Laura.
But this isn't just a movie that happens. To It's not about people, or the impact of people acting aggressively. That's certainly true, but there's a lot of that. To Lola also identifies with people who have little to nothing to do with the main story, which is Lola trying to save her boyfriend's life. But as you watch the three variations, you can sense the shifts and drifts of the main story. The whole of Run Lola Run feels like an exercise in learning and problem-solving. There's no way Lola can “learn” from a story that resets every time, always restarting with Manni's phone call, and negating what she's seen before, any more than a pre-internet writer might decide that the pages of a novel he's typing aren't working, and then angrily rip them out of the typewriter, crumple them up, and throw them in the trash.
At the end of the film, Laura arrives at a casino where she appears to be able to affect the outcome of a game of chance by force of will (her piercing scream seems to shock the universe into realigning in her favor). This is as surprising and delightful as the moment at the end of the first Matrix when Neo raises his hand to block a bullet fired by his enemy, looks down at a slug falling to the hallway carpet, then looks up again and realizes that the virtual world is made up of ones and zeros and can therefore be entirely changed or reprogrammed by him, or at least transcended by recognizing it is all a construct or an illusion.
