Search - The Princess and the Warrior on DVD

Unexpectedly brilliant follow-up to Run Lola Run

FargoUT | Salt Lake City, UT USA | 04/09/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Upon seeing "Run Lola Run" at Sundance, I was immediately taken away with Tom Tykwer's visual stylizations, his camerawork, and his music. A hyperkinetic reality was played out and the audience gave the film a standing ovation. It was a breathtaking moviegoing experience.My expectations for "The Princess and the Warrior" were set high, but nothing prepared me for the impact this film had. An even better film than "Run Lola Run", "Princess" deals directly with issues of fate, chance, and circumstance; this is a movie Kieslowski would have loved. Tykwer takes his themes from "Run Lola Run" and extends them, building on them, creating a juggernaut of emotions. From the intense tracheotomy scene (graphically filmed but poignant at the same time) to the nail-biting climax, "Princess" never fails to provoke the mind or heart. If there is a flaw in the film, it would have to be the a ten-minute section when our heroine Sissi (Potente) takes her "warrior" to the asylum. For a brief time, the film's plot seems to pause for some character realization. Apart from that, the film doesn't let up. It drives with its pulsating music (scored by Tykwer and co.), it challenges your ideals with its story, and it makes you care about the characters in the end. During its "Thelma & Louise"-type climax, I nearly screamed out in terror. These two characters get to your heart and during the final ten minutes, a wide variety of emotions pours through the screen. When the credits roll, you're virtually left drained of energy, and yet thrilled at the same time.Tom Tykwer amazingly improved his storytelling skills with his "Run Lola Run" follow-up, and this will hopefully not be shuffled away to the dark corners of Blockbuster. A powerful, thought-provoking experience, Tykwer's film is everything we could ever want from a Hollywood feature--minus the Hollywood. Released in the U.S. in 2001, it landed my treasured #1 spot for Best Film of the Year. Don't take my word for it though. Rent it and see for yourself."

One of 2001's Most Cruelly Ignored Films

Mr G Bowden | London United Kingdom | 04/10/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"It is criminal that, when writing a review for Tom Tykwer's masterly "The Princess & The Warrior", you almost need to mention Tykwer's previous film, 1999's "Run Lola Run". Using flash-cuts, still photographs, animation, black-and-white stock, digital video and slow-motion photography, amongst other cinematic techniques, Tykwer's sophomore effort, following his little-seen debut "Wintersleepers", announced a new wild, energetic talent behind the camera of world cinema, as well as a new pretty face infront of it in 'Lola' herself, Franka Potente. Two years later, Tykwer follows up "Lola" with something almost completely different in tone and execution, trading in "Lola's" kinetic energy with a leisurely-paced fable that would knock Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "Amelie" out for six.Of course, the comparisons with "Lola" can yield a few results, with some key actors (Franka Potente, Joachim Krol, Lars Rudolph) returning along with some key crew members, including "Lola's" adventurous director of photography Frank Griebe. But, compared to "Lola's" full-on assault on the senses, "Princess" washes over you like a giant tsunami, thanks in large part to its gorgeous cinematography, luminous production design and some nifty special effects (including a specific moment that David Fincher would be proud of). Of particular mention is the score by Tykwer himself and his co-composers Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil (otherwise known as Pale 3), who after granting "Lola" a score that would go down a storm at a rave, expertly wrack up the tension using a more classically influenced sound.Tykwer's bold script and direction remain the catalyst for these factors though. It is testament to his savvy that he gets inside of both Sissi and Bodo's heads and projects their points of view towards the audience in an unpredictable way, avoiding narration for the most part and letting some searing visuals tell us the story; the closing scenes are of reference here as it perfectly captures Bodo's state of mind and his final accepting decision without hardly any lines of dialogue whatsoever. The script, meanwhile, throws in a bank robbery, a loony asylum and a blind medium, amongst other plot devices, that serve the story rather than clog up the narrative, which remains tightly focused on the sparsely-worded relationship between Sissi and Bodo.The acting is wonderful, also, particularly from the two leads. Of course it helps that both of them have amazingly expressive faces, particularly Franka Potente's perfectly formed mouth and Benno Furmann's bluer-than-blue eyes, and are pretty damn attractive as well. Potente answers the critics who slandered her performance in "Lola" as consisting largely of running with a moving performance as Sissi, who could be Amelie Poulain's older, more mature, sexier cousin whilst Furmann unloads some alarming emotional moments most actors in Hollywood wouldn't be able to pull off (and gets naked a couple of times too!). As well as a cast of German supporting players who could eat the "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" inmates for breakfast, Joachim Krol, the tramp in "Lola" who has the elusive money, as Bodo's older, protective brother and Lars Rudolph, the S&M fetishist-turned-bank teller in "Lola", as Sissi's disturbed admirer ably support the leads throughout.How this film was ignored by so many people, particularly academy voters, is beyond me; but anyone who's seen "Lola" and is intrigued by what Tykwer came up with next, before his English-language debut "Heaven" with Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi, mind, ought to check this sweetly romantic yet challengingly dark feature film, if not for Tykwer than for Potente and Furmann, two stars in the making. If that doesn't sway you, the DVD itself has two audio commentaries, deleted scenes and a 40-minute making-of documentary. A worthy package for a more-than-worthy film."