GO
* 1/2 (out of 4) - a below average movie
Release Date: April 9, 1999 Starring: Katie Holmes, Sarah Polley, Jay Mohr, Scott Wolf, Desmond Askew, Taye Diggs, William Fichtner, Nathan Bexton Directed by: Doug Liman Distributed by: Sony Pictures Entertainment / TriStar Pictures MPAA Rating: R (strong drug content, sexuality, language, some violence) URL: http://www.execpc.com/~kinnopio/reviews/1999/go.htm
Filmmakers will use all manner of tricks to flesh out and brighten up a dull, dreary, and overused idea. Doug Liman (SWINGERS), director of the ultra-hip and severely dark comedy GO, is an example of just such a filmmaker. In his latest, he gives the viewers a raucous, neon-lit backdrop as cinematographer and points the audience down a drug-infested path of misadventure as director. But he fails to come up with any parallel structure in his multi-tiered movie and he fails to connect with the audience on any level, bringing the worth of his efforts to nil and the value of GO to about the same.
His movie is produced anthology-style -- telling the same story from multiple (three) points of view, much as an author might write a serial novel. Consistent with this ethic, Liman and screenwriter John August provide a bit of an overlap at the beginning of each narrative and insert brief connections to other narratives. The thread that laces the three stories together is a drug deal and the events thereafter. In story A we have checkout clerk Ronna (Sarah Polley) looking to score some rent money and turning to drug trafficking to do it; in story B we have regular drug dealer Simon (Desmond Askew) gone to Las Vegas giving Ronna her opportunity; and in story C we have gay soap actors Zack (Jay Mohr) and Adam (Scott Wolf) working undercover for the police to bust said drug deal.
Neither of the three stories have much substance, and the movie has the feel of a campfire story (albeit a rather strange one) that could be told in five to ten minutes. (In fact, the movie was originally a short film entitled X expanded to feature length.) The early April release date is too mistimed to capitalize on the movie's Christmas setting, and the Los Angeles/Las Vegas nightlife is something too far from the mainstream for most theater-goers to attach themselves to. The characters are shallow to the point of prerequisite, and performances from little-known players like Polley, Askew, and Taye Diggs don't help or hurt the roles. In fact, even bigger names like Mohr, Wolf, and Katie Holmes don't have enough time to make substantial success.
Although that's almost expected for lack of continuous screen time, the success in the picture should come from a thread that binds the stories. GO doesn't have this, and it suffers because of it. As far as teen movies are concerned, GO represents the absolute bottom, for its constant stream of indecipherable light and sound mean nothing without some sort of common theme. (The following do not count as common themes: drug deals, people attempting to have romantic interludes with drug dealers, people resorting to drug deals for alterior motives, or people not involved in drug deals stumbling into them.) At times, the humor in GO is sickly funny, and on a low night, almost watchable; but for the majority of its running time and for most viewers, this movie will best be left to teens at Blockbuster on a Saturday night.
all contents © 1999 Craig Roush
-- Craig Roush kinnopio@execpc.com -- Kinnopio's Movie Reviews http://www.execpc.com/~kinnopio
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