The follow-up to Tom Tykwer’s manic and involving 1998 film, Run Lola Run, The Princess and the Warrior opens in a psychiatric ward. Franka Potente plays a nurse, Sissi. Elsewhere in this small German city lurks Bodo Reimer (Benno Furmann), a former soldier turned petty crook. Fate comes into play when Reimer uses a tanker truck as a getaway vehicle from one of his crimes, and in doing so, manages to drive the truck into Sissi. The crook becomes a hero, and – when she recovers – Sissi feels the need to unravel the whys and hows of her rescue.
But this isn’t a bad-guy-who’s-really-a-decent-guy story. It’s much messier than that, and Sissi eventually finds herself entangled even more closely with the sullen Reimer.
It’s difficult to avoid comparing The Princess and the Warrior with Tykwer’s previous work. Artifacts reminiscent of Run Lola Run pop up repeatedly in this movie – among them we find a criminal enterprise, the setting of urban Germany, the dilation of time for effect. By comparison with the frenetic Run Lola Run, The Princess and the Warrior is slow and contemplative. The running time of more than two hours dilutes the plot into a thin broth of events, where Run Lola Run was compressed into a tight 81 minutes. This movie is so slow that it feels like a stereotypical European movie, full of brooding people exchanging long glances, shots of funky architecture and scenes that land in the absurd.
Some of the plot elements make no sense at all. The mental institution where Sissi works seems like it was managed by the screenwriter of a porn movie. Nurses give patients sexual favors. The nurse’s quarters are connected to the patient ward, allowing the disturbed to poke their heads into the nurse’s bathrooms. On top of this, The Princess and The Warrior borrows elements from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Killing Zoe and Reservoir Dogs. Those are great movies, but shaving off plot elements, like cutting segments out of a Piccasso and a Rembrandt does not necessarily result in the creation of another masterpiece. Some of the plot devices that unfold early in the movie return later on, but it’s not effective foreshadowing and it doesn’t seem that the intention is to resonate an idea. Instead, it feels like Tykwer ran out of ideas, so had to borrow from himself.
If we can put aside the film’s weaknesses – the story, the borrowing of ideas, and too many logic holes – this movie does at least demonstrate that Tykwer’s ability to direct is intact, as is the skill of his cast. If only the ability to write an engaging screenplay came with this package, The Princess and The Warrior would be more than it is – an endurance test of overly long sequences bereft of impact.
