by Curtis Edmonds -- blueduck@hsbr.org
I caught Go on the rebound. My chosen movie for the evening was Lee Marvin leading The Dirty Dozen, playing at Austin's Paramount Theater (www.theparamount.org) as part of their summer classic movie series. Unfortunately, when the MGM lion appeared at the start of the movie, he didn't roar. The Paramount's sound system was missing in action. After a couple of false starts, the theater manager announced that they couldn't get the sound rolling, and that re-admit passes would be waiting at the box office. (Note to film preservationists: According to the Paramount people, this is the only 35mm reel of The Dirty Dozen in existence, and what I saw of it looked badly faded.)
I had two dollars in my pocket -- drinks and popcorn at the Paramount are reasonably priced, thank goodness -- which meant that the only available cure for cinema interruptis was a trip to the dollar movie, where Go looked like the best of a mixed bag. In one of the opening scenes, three supermarket clerks are sitting in the back of the store, playing a "Dead Celebrities" word game, and one throws out the name, "Lee Marvin". I was in the right place.
Go's cinematic origins, though, have less to do with Lee Marvin and more to do with Quentin Tarantino. Go actually starts in a small cafe with a young man and a young woman chatting about nothing, a conversation that is recapitulated in the last third of the movie. Pulp Fiction fans will recognize this homage, and will feel right at home with Go's interlocking tripartite narrative. Go takes place in the same seedy underbelly of Los Angeles that houses the Tarantino universe, but its characters are younger, hipper, and less cynical. Nobody in Go eats Big Kahuna Burgers or hangs out at Jackrabbit Slim's or reads Modesty Blaise on the can. They're too busy dancing at rave parties and worrying about how to pay the rent. Unlike the businesslike hitmen in Pulp Fiction, the characters in Go are likable and spunky: there aren't any bad guys in this movie to speak of.
To reveal much of the twisty plot of Go would be to spoil it entirely. As the movie's theme song suggests, Go is a Magic Carpet Ride, whizzing up, down, and all around, back and forth through time and space, with all the plot points intricately woven together in a tight-knit pattern. The narrative skips from a dumpy Los Angeles supermarket (one almost expects The Dude from The Big Lebowski to shuffle by in his bathrobe) to the Strip in Las Vegas to a Christmas Eve rave party in an abandoned warehouse. Oddball characters abound, from a pair of blissed-out Vegas bridesmaids to a supermarket checker who gets stoned to the point where he can hear cats talk, to a police couple with... shall we say... outside interests.
Since I can't talk about the plot much -- other to say that it's a hoot -- I'll concentrate on the first-rate job by the ensemble cast. The two most familiar faces belong to Jay Mohr and William Fichtner. You will remember Mohr as the rival super-agent Burt Sugar from the sainted Jerry Maguire, where he spent the movie stealing scenes and clients from Tom Cruise. Here, he's struggling young actor Zack, who we first see planning a pre-rave partner with fellow actor Adam (Scott Wolf) that, apparently, requires mass quantities of frozen concentrated orange juice. Fichtner was last seen as the shuttle pilot in Armageddon, whose job was to delay the movie so that Bruce Willis could wait until the last possible second to destroy the asteroid. In Go, Fichtner graduates from being the poor man's Christopher Walken up to the relatively-well-off man's Christopher Walken. He's got the same role that Kevin Spacey had in L.A. Confidential, policeman to the stars, and if he plays the part with less panache than Spacey, he more than makes up for it in creepiness.
But the real stars of Go are the younger actors, and they get a splendid chance to shine here. The first third of the movie focuses on the aforementioned supermarket clerks. Sarah Polley is nothing short of hypnotic as the supermarket checker who decides, almost impulsively, to branch out into drug sales. You don't see that many anti-heroines out there, but Polley is everything you'd want in such a character, smart, tough, streetwise, brave, ready to take a risk, and ready to bail out if the need arises. Her sidechick is Katie Holmes, who appears to be on TV in something called Dawson's Creek that I've never heard of. She's got the movie's first, enigmatic lines, but she mostly tags along behind Polley's character. Nathan Bexton does some good scene-stealing work as their stoned friend.
In the second third of the movie, Go shifts abruptly from twisty drug intrigue to full-scale male fantasy movie. Young British actor Desmond Askew and Taye Diggs tear a wide swath through Las Vegas, getting into more trouble in half an hour than most of us can manage all year. Askew is interesting as a second-generation Austin Powers, ineptly roaming the casinos. Taye Diggs doesn't get much screen time, but manages to leave an impression of being the incarnation of cool.
There are a couple more things I could say about the movie, but Go is at its best when it manages to surprise the audience -- and it does so with style. Go is a surprisingly good movie with some really exceptional ensemble performances by some talented young actors. (It's not The Dirty Dozen, of course, but what is nowadays?)
-- Curtis D. Edmonds blueduck@hsbr.org
"First, you show up. Then you see what happens."
-- Napoleon Bonaparte
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