Go

Returning to the so-called great year of 1999, I turn to one of the year's under-rated nuggets, Go, directed by Doug Liman from a script by John August. I loved it, and in fact had the poster on the wall in my bathroom, which I thought appropriate (I need to go, get it?) The film did not well do at the box office, though.

Certainly inspired by Pulp Fiction, Go is told non-linearly, with three stories starting at one point but going off in different directions. The first story is that of Ronna (Sarah Polley), a glum supermarket checkout girl who is about to be evicted. She decides to buy some ecstasy from a local dealer (Timothy Olyphant) and sell to a pair of soap opera actors, but when she realizes it's a police set-up, she flushes the pills. To make the money back, she sells over the counter drugs at a rave to young men who wouldn't know ecstasy if it hit them in the head.

Story two is that of Simon (Desmond Askew), a British transplant, who is off to Las Vegas with his buddies. He starts a fire in a hotel room, has sex with two bridesmaids, and then shoots a bouncer in a strip club, starting a chase through the streets of Vegas.

The third story concerns those two actors (Scott Wolf and Jay Mohr), who have agreed to help snag a dealer for a policeman (William Fichtner) in return for charges being dropped. They are in the closet gay lovers, but get very rattled when Fichtner invites them home for Christmas dinner (did I say this all takes place at Christmas?) Thinking Fichtner wants to swing, it turns out that he and his wife (Jane Krakowski) are recruiters for an Amway-type company.

What makes Go work is its energy, amplifying on its name. The word is used often (the story goes that the most often used line in movies is "let's get out of here," which is a kind of way of saying go). Before the Columbia logo is off, Liman is off and running, making the film match its youth, who are into rave culture, X, and tantric sex. Even when in danger, the characters act as if they are in a grand adventure, which they are.

Also helping is that all three stories are strong. Polley is the glue that holds it together, as she is ultimately run over in the rave parking lot by the same actors who tried to set her up (but ultimately saved her). She has a great deadpan awareness about her. The Vegas segment is also fun, even though Askew's character is a complete idiot. When I watch films set in Vegas, I try to identify landmarks, but when it comes to the Strip, twenty years ago might as well have been 200. The boys are staying at at the Riviera, long gone.

The third segment is the weakest, since there is sort of a homosexual panic about it, even though the characters are gay (both Wolf and Mohr act their parts as if they are saying, "We're not really gay") But after they run over Polley, and try to resolve the issue, the tone of the segment becomes deeply sardonic.

Some of the elements of the plot don't work. The resolution of the Askew/bouncer scene is laughably unbelievable. But most of it does, and though I've seen the film now three or four times I was immediately drawn into its world.

There are actors here on the way up and on the way down. Katie Holmes, pre-Tom Cruise, is Polley's friend, and Olyphant, later a star on Deadwood and Justified, is great as a dealer who isn't as scary as he pretends (and also has a great speech about how "The Family Circus" ruins the comics page). Melissa McCarthy makes her film debut. Some actors who were fairly known at the time have fallen off the cliff, particularly Wolf and Mohr, while Krakowski went on to greatness on 30 Rock.

Go is a bit of a time capsule. Ecstasy, newspaper comics page, pagers, raves, all of these things seem antediluvian now. I was too old for raves back then, and never took a hit of X in my life (needless to say I've never tried tantric sex) but I identified with the characters and rooted for all of them. It's a great film.