Missed Again

Watching the average American action movie nowadays is like watching a row of dominoes fall. Suspension of disbelief is a natural part of the movies, sure. But when you see yet another shootout in which the bad guys constantly miss their target and the heroes manage to outrun the gigantic explosion, it’s hard to be on the edge of your seat.

Characters in these movies seem to exist in a world where everything happens in their favor. You know that whenever there’s a massive car wreck, only the useless supporting characters will actually get killed.

But a movie currently playing calls standard Hollywood “logic” into question. “Run Lola Run,” the film that won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival this year, is a special treat: a thriller that actually thrills.

This German import is wonderful, fast-paced entertainment, but it also serves as an antidote for anyone who has become worn out by too many Hollywood action movies.

It’s the story of a young woman who has 20 minutes to deliver a large sum of money to her boyfriend; he owes the cash to a group of gangsters, and he’ll lose his life if he doesn’t get it to them. As a result, Lola has just a third of an hour to use her wits.

If this were your average American thriller, we’d sit back and watch the rest of the movie roll by according to plan. However, writer-director Tom Tykwer has a different game in mind. He shows Lola’s quest in three 20-minute versions, each beginning with slight alterations and leading to incredibly diverse endings.

Logic as we know it is in command here. The slightest change of events in “Run Lola Run”--an extra step, a head turned the other way--can lead to a whole new chain of repercussions. By the end of the movie, we realize we’re trapped in something that resembles the real world, where coincidences don’t always work out for the best.

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In American movies, however, you see just how critical these coincidences are. “Lethal Weapon” and James Bond movies rely on their absurdity as part of the fun. But when supposedly “serious” movies end up using the same thriller cliches, it gets a bit hard to swallow.

So what if we could impose real-world logic on Hollywood movies? Take the current “Arlington Road.” The climactic sequence of this film is based on the idea that villain Tim Robbins has planted a bomb in hero Jeff Bridges’ car and arranged for him to drive it into a local FBI building.

It sounds like a sure-fire plan--assuming that Bridges, who is driving miles over the speed limit, downtown, on the wrong side of the road, doesn’t get pulled over by a cop. And that his car survives the several crashes it gets into along the way.

Or how about the final scene of last summer’s “Armageddon,” in which Bruce Willis, riding on an asteroid that’s fast heading toward Earth, makes a stirring farewell speech to his compatriots before detonating the big rock?

It works nicely; he says his goodbyes, everyone gets teary, and then the planet gets saved. I’d have preferred an ending in which he let his speech run a few minutes too long and the solar system ended up short a planet.

At their best, Hollywood thrillers may be fun, escapist entertainment, but they rarely surprise you enough to jolt your nerves. “Run Lola Run,” however, may give you a more skeptical eye.

After all, you can watch only so many chase-and-crash scenes before you start to wonder, “Don’t these heroes ever get their driver’s licenses revoked?”