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If you go to see The Princess and the Warrior with the expectation of a fast-paced adrenaline rush like writer/director Tom Tykwer's kinetic 1999 arthouse smash Run Lola Run, you may be a bit disappointed. That's not to say Warrior isn't good; it's just not as relentlessly concise and edgy as Lola. The pace is more akin to Tykwer's first film, Wintersleepers, which was released after Lola's success in the States. Although Warrior doesn't measure up to either Lola or Wintersleepers, it does deal with similar subject matter, like coincidence and destiny, making Tykwer somewhat of a second coming of the late Polish auteur Krzysztof Kieslowski.
Warrior stars Lola's Franka Potente (Blow) as Sissi, a quiet, mousy psychiatric hospital nurse who has a pretty serious accident at the beginning of the film. While accompanied by one of the nuthouse's blind patients, Sissi is hit by a giant truck and lies underneath it, unable to breathe. Suddenly, a young man appears and performs an emergency procedure that will remind some of the Pulp Fiction breastplate-puncturing scene. As disturbing as the scene is, it's the best "meet cute" in a confined space since J. Lo and George Clooney took that trunk ride together in Out of Sight.
Sissi spends a couple of months recovering in the hospital, but once she's mobile again, she sets out to find the mystery man who saved her life. The only clues she has are a button she pulled off the man's shirt and the blind patient who "witnessed" the entire incident. What Sissi doesn't know is that the man, named Bodo (Benno Fürmann), is a thief who unwittingly caused the truck to hit her as he ran from a botched bank robbery. Bodo, an ex-soldier, dove under the truck to avoid the pursuing policemen more than anything.
Tykwer, who also co-wrote the film's score, does a good job fleshing out the background of his two leads, especially the heartbreaking, self-hating Bodo, who, after the death of his wife, landed a job at a funeral home but was sacked after bawling at his first funeral. The bank robbery was supposed to be The Big Score that, presumably, would help to erase the misery of his past, which often causes him to wake up crying while clutching onto the boiler in his bedroom.
The wide-eyed Potente, who gets to wear a few different outfits this time (and her hair has changed from shocking orange to a tamer blonde), proves her work in Lola was no fluke. Her Sissi is the princess of the asylum; a dreamer who thinks fate brought her and Bodo together for a reason.
Warrior is much more serious than Tykwer's previous two efforts, and a little self-important, too. While it offers a few twists and turns like Wintersleepers (and is nearly as colorful), it has no edge, and the ending that's supposed to stoke your imagination falls pretty flat. Warrior is definitely pleasing to the eye, with cinematographer Frank Griebe returning from Lola and Wintersleepers to provide lush photography.
2:13 - R for disturbing images, language and some sexual content
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