Go

GO (1998) **

Reviewed 4/16/99

Go is almost entertaining, utterly substanceless drivel. The story follows three different subsets of characters over a day and a night as their paths cross here and there. A 17-year old grocery clerk tries to make a drug deal so as not to be evicted from her apartment; a group of four guys take an ill-fated trip to Las Vegas; and two B-grade television actors are forced to help a bizarre cop in a narcotics bust.

Many critics have noted Pulp Fiction as Go's inspiration, but by now, it's really third-generation Tarantino, a derivative of Pulp Fiction-derivatives like 2 Days in the Valley. At least 2 Days' writer-director John Herzfeld actually had emotional investment in his characters unlike here. Go writer John August and director Doug Liman seemingly leave it entirely up to their actors to imbue their characters with any sense of humanity. Luckily for them, a few succeed. Though Sarah Polley sustains a sour expression throughout as grocery clerk Ronna Martin, Polley keeps signs of life seeping through her mask. Taye Diggs as the only almost sensible character (who also happens to be the film's sole African American) and Timothy Olyphant as a drug dealer also draw all the energy in every scene they're in. The rest of the characters in Go serve only the single purpose of giving the film tone.

Mindless tone is really all Go is. Go shows the stupidity of youth, but while ostensibly punishing the characters for their imbecilic actions, the film actually revels in the adventures induced by their idiocy and wants us to do the same. Then it sanitizes the ultimate consequences for each character in unrealistic, harmless ways (none moreso than for Desmond Askew's Simon Baines, the most imbecilic of all). The implicit message is, "Yeah, we conned people's money, overdosed on drugs, started a fire, shot someone, engaged in a high speed car chase in the middle of Las Vegas, and perpetrated a hit-and-run accident, and yeah, realistically, we should either be dead, maimed or in prison, but wasn't it fun?"

Go's usage of telling overlapping stories from the perspectives of different characters is the fad right now, and it is already old (see Lovers of the Arctic Circle). When Tarantino did it in Jackie Brown, he already showed its limitations. Without a revelatory sense of necessary continuity within a web of characters, it just comes off as a gimmick. Go is also not helped in this respect by its mediocre editing. The third sequence especially feels haphazard, as if too much was left on the cutting room floor.

August and Liman are not half as funny as they think they are. Many jokes flat-out bomb. Go is only halfway salvaged by the few good jokes and a few good actors.