Go Film Review
Go is set over a 24-hour period in Los Angeles and Las Vegas and is structured into three separate but interlocking stories. Checkout girl Ronna (Sarah Polley) is facing eviction at christmas and to raise enough cash she embarks on her first drug deal with Mannie(Nathan Bexton) who ends up taking a bit much. Unfortunately her friend Simon (Desmond Askew) who normally sets people up is off to Las Vegas with his friends. So she goes to Simon's dealer Todd Gaines (Timothy Olyphant) for the drugs. She dosn't have enough cash so she has to leave her friend Claire (katie Holmes) as collateral until she returns.
Story two starts off at the store again but follows Simon this time as he heads out of town with his friends, including Marcus (Taye Diggs). Things don't quite go to plan as they get involved in tantric sex, setting fire to the hotel, guns, car chases and lap-dancing.
Story three follows soap stars Adam and Zack (Scott Wolf & Jay Mohr), the guys who originaly asked Ronna to score for them. It turns out they are reluctanly being undercover decoys to a cop, Burke, played by William Fichtner. This story features a strange christmas dinner, hit and run and some personal revenge.
This is a sublimely brilliant film in all possible ways. Everything about is is perfect. The direction and camerawork is spot on, the music is moody and atmospheric at all the right times and the dialogue is sharp and witty. The story is complex and unpredictable and all the characters are fully fleshed-out and "real" feeling. The story and script has been treated like the work of art it is - no loose ends, nothing to detract from the plot, at times thrilling, at times funny, but the most impressive thing about it is the care taken in the casting. A bad film can be vastly improved with the right cast and a good film can be ruined by the wrong actors, but in Go, the casting is perfection itself.
Desmond Askew as Simon Baines and Timothy Olyphant as Todd Gaines shine in this picture due partly to their excellant lines and partly to impressive acting skills. Katie Holmes as Claire Montgomery, while lacking some of the better lines is always believable and in the last 10 minutes of the film takes centre stage for the tying up of the three separate stories. Her facial expressions in Todd Gaines's apartment in the final scene with Simon and Todd are perfectly timed and executed, lending the scene humour and grace, in what could otherwise have been a bit of an anticlimax.
A truely great film, worth watching again and again. A film full of subtle little nuances that you won't pick up the first time.
-Reviewed by Cam (aka Mr Chaosium)
