Go is yet another offering from the abundant crop of teen movies to come out of America over the past year, and so I wondered which of the
heavily-plundered genre baskets director Doug Liman had chosen to dip into
for his follow up to Swingers.
Would Go be a Scream-style shocker or new millennial Shakespeare perhaps? A semen-centric sophomoric Jane Austen update or would Liman attempt the effects-driven, sci-fi money eating monster? The answer, it would seem, is none of the above, for Liman has strayed from the pack to deliver
something new to the teen market in the form of a crossover intelligent black comedy.
The action begins in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve where we are introduced
to checkout operators Simon, Ronna and Claire, whose paths are set to
collide with those of soap stars Adam and Zack as the result of a bungled
drug deal.
A very savvy Sarah Polley starts the ball rolling as the indomitable Ronna
whose entrepreneurial plans to rid herself of her debts soon spiral
dangerously out of control. At this point, the narrative skips back to the
start and the action begins again, this time from the perspective of
fellow checker-outer and all round British person, Simon (Desmond Askew).
He trades shifts with Ronna and makes for Las Vegas with three friends for
a full-on lads outing complete with gambling, girls and ultimately guns
which spirals dangerously out of control. (Anyone see a pattern
emerging here?). At which point we skip back to pick up with Adam and
Zack, and so it goes on with the three separate plot lines colliding and
interlocking a la Pulp Fiction/Lock, Stock... until all the loose ends are tied up.
There is an all pervading air of sleaze about this film as we move from
seedy drug dealer flat to warehouse rave, to Vegas hotel room, to brothel
and to the home of one very peculiar policeman, making Go no
run-of-the-mill Christmas yarn by any means. The gallows humour is slow to
get going, but the laughs increase as the action gathers pace.
The ensemble cast includes a few well-known faces such as Party of Five's Scott Wolf as Adam, and Dawson's Creek star Katie Holmes as Claire, who will doubtless help to draw in the target audience while proving
themselves to be actors of far greater acclaim than their teen soap roles
will ever afford them.
And while Go may not have the box-office pull of some of it's less
challenging rivals, it might just go on to become a teen cult hit as enduring as one
particular Brat Pack classic referenced early on in the movie.
Reviewed by Katy Thompson
