Go (7/10)
7th September 1999: Cineworld, Bristol
Set in a world of sex, drugs and clubbing, Go tells three stories whose characters and action intersect with each other at several points, giving us different perspectives on the same events throughout the film.
Simon (Desmond Askew) works in a supermarket and is minor drug dealer. While he's away on a trip to Las Vegas, two strangers arrive seeking to make use his services. In his absence, fellow worker Ronna (Sarah Polley) sees an oportunity to make the money she needs to avoid eviction. She tells the strangers she can get the drugs they want. Meanwhile, Simon and his mates are upsetting some Las Vegas villians. And aren't those strangers a little familar? In this film, nothing goes to plan and much is not what it seems.
The structural similarities to Pulp Fiction are glaring, and the director Doug Liman, whose previous film was the indie minor classic Swingers, must have been aware that Go would be branded a Pulp Fiction rip-off. But he went ahead and did it anyway. Which is lucky for us, because Go is great fun, with the characters in the three stories finding themselves deep over their heads in criminal entanglements, forcing each to make a hasty exit from their own sticky situation, hence the film's title.
A problem with the film is that most of the the main characters with whom we are meant to identify are singularly unappealing, each being involved in their own little scams or crooked deals. The film is far from amoral, however, as comeuppances fly in from all directions. There are a few implausibilities in the film, but that is more than made up for by some clever confounding of audience expectations, especially in the the last segment, which tells the story of Zack and Adam, a pair of actors who in order to have a minor drugs charge dropped are helping the police with some undercover work. The police office they work with, excellently played by William Fichtner, becomes increasingly creepy, but his motives are not what you expect.
Go doesn't have the crisp exuberant visual style of Pulp Fiction, but has a grittier, seedier feel which better suits the somewhat sordid world in which the stories take place. It is fast-paced, well-written fun, but is a little hollow and very derivative.
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Gary Jones
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