GO (Columbia - 1999) Cast: Desmond Askew, Taye Diggs, William Fichtner, J.E. Freeman, Katie Holmes, Jane Karkowski, Breckin Meyer, Jay Mohr, Timothy Olyphant, Sarah Polley, Scott Wolf Screenplay by John August Produced by Paul Rosenberg, Mickey Liddell, Matt Freeman Directed by Doug Liman Running time: 100 minutes
Note: Some may consider portions of the following text to be spoilers. Be forewarned.
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Doug Liman's GO is almost the certainly the first film in Columbia Pictures' history where its trademark fanfare and torch-bearing emblem flickers out to give way to a full-out rave in progress. It's the sort of brazenly confident touch which Liman employs throughout the picture, revealing a fearless flashiness previously unseen in his breakout debut, SWINGERS. So frenetic is GO, so aggressively energized, it'd be utterly exhausting were it not so exhilirating.
Wearing its sardonic sense of humour like a badge of honour, the snappy screenplay by John August segments the film into three interrelated sections running along the same 24-hour timeline and careens through them at a breakneck pace. We meet Ronna (Sarah Polley), in desperate need of rent money, who haphazardly engineers a drug deal which predictably goes awry. There's her co-worker Simon (Desmond Askew), who embarks on a disasterous misadventure during a fling to Las Vegas with friends. And there's Adam (Scott Wolf) and Zack (Jay Mohr), the soap opera actors who instigated the deal with Ronna and find themselves stumbling into a strange series of quandries.
The entire film, in fact, is essentially a string of escalating situations which comically spin out of control in quirky and unexpected ways as its collection of disaffected young characters recklessly plow through the night. While each of the vignettes has a slightly different tone -- Adam and Zack's is the most wickedly mischievous, while the madcap anarchy in Simon's manic half-hour contrasts with the sly deliberation in Ronna's chapter -- they easily meld in this lively black comedy where both Liman and his characters throw caution to the wind and charge into a pulsating world of dangerous chic.
Despite possessing elements of action and tension, at heart, GO is a gleeful comic romp and consequently Liman never takes the mishaps which befall the characters seriously -- there are shootings, ODs and other assorted misfortunes, and yet the film doesn't let up for a moment; it's as if the director feared the picture would stall the moment he took his foot off the pedal. While there's nothing especially remarkable about August's topical, consciously hip dialogue, the situations in which the characters find themselves are often very witty and some of the cute little touches are inspired; the unlikely macerena and feline sage are standout moments.
As good as Liman is in effectively injecting offbeat comedy into otherwise grim situations of youthful folly, his confident, kinetic visual work is his chief contribution to the picture. The film's urgent pacing is assisted by Liman's bold, appealingly edgy cinematography; the handheld camerawork pops with energy that complements the rhythmic soundtrack, and Stephen Mirrione's crisp editing helps keep GO humming.
While it's Liman's picture, the young ensemble cast is uniformly solid. I don't think that her performance as resilient would-be drug dealer Ronna is vintage Sarah Polley, but it says a lot that she's nonetheless wholly arresting. In his North American debut, Askew is great naughty fun, while Taye Diggs as level-headed friend Marcus is an unexpectedly strong screen presence. Katie Holmes, playing Ronna's timid friend Claire, makes for an appealing collatoral, while William Fichtner makes a strong bid for leftover Christopher Walken roles with his memorable turn as the creepy Burke.
For all of its propulsiveness, GO begins to run out of steam before reaching the finish line, but its primary deficiency is its sheer narrative unpredictablility; all of the twists and turns in the plot basically play out in random fashion. While this certainly helps to keep the audience on its toes and involved to a certain degree, such arbitrariness also makes the proceedings feel a bit fleeting and shallow. Although PULP FICTION, to which this picture owes its structural resemblence and shared general aesthetic, completely deals with redemptive themes, GO really doesn't have any running undercurrent -- it's cheerfully, blissfully amoral, and consequently lacks any real resonance. Ultimately, GO is nothing more than a thrill ride, but it's a stylish, enjoyable one.
[ *** (out of four stars) | Alternate Rating: B+ ]
- Alex Fung, April 10, 1999
email: aw220@freenet.carleton.ca
web : http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~aw220/
-- Alex Fung (aw220@freenet.carleton.ca) | http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~aw220/ "THE DREAMLIFE OF ANGELS happens to be one of the best French movies since Jules met Jim." - Anthony Lane, THE NEW YORKER
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