Review | Netflix movie review: Looop Lapeta – Hindi remake of Run Lola Run takes a relaxed approach to the cult German thriller
- This Hindi remake of the 1998 classic German time-loop thriller pays tribute to late-1990s films including Runaway Bride
- It’s a more relaxed story than the original, but with more plot threads that make the storyline feel cluttered
3/5 stars
A Hindi remake of the 1998 German thriller Run Lola Run, Aakash Bhatia’s Looop Lapeta follows a young woman, trapped in a time loop, as she tries repeatedly to save her boyfriend from a murderous gangster.
Taapsee Pannu and Tahir Raj Bhasin star in this lighthearted comedy thriller that is influenced by numerous late-1990s favourites beyond Tom Tykwer’s experimental cult hit.
Savi (Pannu) was a committed athlete until an injury ended her career and drove her to the brink of suicide. She was talked off the ledge, quite literally, by Satya (Bhasin), a likeable if unreliable slacker. They fall in love, but Savi’s lack of ambition sees her grow estranged from her trainer father (KC Shankar), especially after he comes out as gay following her mother’s death.
When Satya accidentally leaves five million rupees of his boss’ money on the bus, he has just 50 minutes to replace the cash, and resolves to rob a jewellery store.
The central hook of Run Lola Run was a 20-minute dash to secure 100,000 Deutschmarks, played out in close to real-time. When Lola’s efforts are unsuccessful, the clock is reset, and events unfold in similar, but subtly different ways three separate times until she gets it right.
Looop Lapeta expands the time period to 50 minutes and forgoes the real-time approach while expanding the central couple’s backstory, leading to a more lethargically paced and cluttered narrative.
Despite these changes, Bhatia retains many of the visual settings and recurring altercations from Tykwer’s original film. He also adds a number of extraneous plot threads that become entangled and revised along with Savi and Satya’s predicament.
The jeweller’s buffoonish sons stage their own robbery of the family store, and would not feel out of place in an early Guy Ritchie offering. Simultaneously, bride-to-be “Julia” (Shreya Dhanwanthary) threatens to abandon her wedding in favour of taxi driver “Robert” (Alistar Bennis) in a playful nod to the contemporaneous romcom Runaway Bride.
All these fin-de-siècle pop culture references inevitably make Looop Lapeta feel strangely dated, while its “life can change in a day” philosophy pales beside Tykwer’s more cerebral and existential explorations of fate and determinism.
The frenetic, breathless pace of its predecessor is also supplanted by a breezier, more laissez faire approach, despite the similarly high stakes, but Looop Lapeta’s heart is in the right place, and its leads prove undeniably sympathetic despite their flaws.
The 12 best Asian films of 2021: Drive My Car, Drifting, The Falls and more
Looop Lapeta is streaming on Netflix.
