Different Perspectives, Intertwining Stories

Doug Liman has made a name for himself as a solid, dependable, blockbuster filmmaker. While not all of his films have been financial successes (and the failure of Edge of Tomorrow still stings), he’s made enough solid hits (like The Bourne Identity, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and American Made) that he’s become something of a name. When you see Liman’s name on a film you can generally know that what you’ll get is a well made, well directed, probably pretty fun experience. That’s something to appreciate from a director.

With that said, it’s interesting to see just how quickly Liman shifted from indie filmmaker over to blockbuster director. Naturally he started off with much smaller films. 1994’s Getting In was his first movie but it was Swingers in 1996, working off a script by Jon Favreau, that was his breakout movie. On a budget of only $250K, Swingers pulled in $4.6 Mil, which is a solid return on investment. And then between that and The Bourne Identity in 2002, Liman became a name.

But, slotting in between those two films was another movie, one that is often forgotten in the director’s oeuvre. This little film, made on a budget of $20 Mil, was the next test for the director to prove he could handle bigger, more complicated film, and while the movie, Go, didn’t exactly make a splash at the Box Office (in only pulled in $28.5 Mil during its run) it did prove that Liman could handle far more complicated productions with action, comedy, drama, and adventure all mixed in. It was a real crowning moment for the director… just so long as you ignore the fact that the film flopped during its initial release.

Go isn’t just one story; it’s actually three. The first focuses on Ronna (Sarah Polley), a grocery store worker who is desperate for any cash she can make so she can pay rent. It’s Christmas time and she’s about to get evicted, making for a pretty terrible holiday. She and her friends, Manny (Nathan Bexton) and Claire (Katie Holmes), know of a rave going on, and Ronna has the idea that she can get some drugs from her dealer Simon’s dealer, Todd (Timothy Olyphant), cheaper and then she can sell them to someone looking to party at the rave to make the scratch she needs. She has to leave Claire with Todd as collateral, and then when she meets the guys looking to score, Adam (Scott Wolf) and Zack (Jay Mohr), she gets a bad vibe and flushes the drugs. Good thing, too, since they were working for the cops. Unfortunately she then has to get fake drugs to get back to Todd, so she can get Claire, and then she still has to make her scratch… so she sells the fake drugs at the rave, and suddenly things quickly get off the rails.

Meanwhile, we cut back to Ronna’s dealer, Simon (Desmond Askew). He’s off to Vegas for the weekend with his pals – Taye Diggs as Marcus, Breckin Meyer as "Tiny", and James Duval as Singh – but Simon is kind of an idiot and, over and over, manages to get his pals into trouble. He blows all his money at the casino, and then nearly bankrupts his friends. Then he crashes a wedding and accidentally sets a hotel room on fire. Then he drags Marcus to a strip club and manages to get in trouble with the guys running the joint. It all leads to the crew having to flee Vegas as fast as they can before they get killed by the mob. And that doesn’t even get into Adam and Zack’s story, and how they got wrapped up with the police. There’s a lot going on in Go.

The best way to think of Go is as an anthology film, a comedic series of adventures starring a small crew of interconnected characters. Ronna’s story doesn’t really relate to Simon’s adventure except for the fact Ronna covers Simon’s shift so he can go to Vegas. Their stories take place, quite literally, in different cities so outside of an initial scene, they don’t actually end up relating back to each other. And then there’s Adam and Zack who, similarly, have their own adventure that barely crosses over with Ronna’s outside of the drug deal story. Each adventure is segmented off to explore a different story altogether.

Really, about the only thing connecting these three stories are drugs, and that’s just a loose connection. Ronna wants to sell drugs just to get enough money together for rent. She gets some, loses them, gets fakes, and then ends up selling the fakes at a rave. Simon’s her usual dealer, but he goes off elsewhere and has an adventure that doesn’t even really relate to Ronna’s at all. It’s like a palate cleanser middle entry before Adam and Zack come along. Their story is also all about drugs, how they got popped by the cops for using, and then try to ensnare Ronna as the next “bigger fish” up the chain. The loose thread is the drug connection, but they’re really three very different stories all going on at the same time.

I think that very loose connective tissue is likely one of the main reasons why this film failed to catch people’s attention. How do you describe a film that doesn’t have a solid throughline? This isn’t like Tales from the Darkside or Cat’s Eye, which were horror anthologies. The connection there is horror. A comedy anthology about a bunch of people doing random things doesn’t really have the same hook, and if you can’t say what the stories are really about, how do you get butts in theater seats?

It’s a pity, though, because Go is actually a pretty fun movie. It’s interesting to see each character spin off and get their own story, having their own adventure on the night of the rave. They go off, get into trouble, find danger, find laughs, and all come back together the next morning (maybe) having learned something in the process. And at just over a hundred minutes, the film doesn’t linger too long, never drawing things out. It’s fleet and fun and gets out before it starts to bore its audience.

And it was packed with great stars that were still on the rise. Sarah Polley plays the feisty, streetwise Ronna long before she went off to become an Academy Award winning director. Timothy Olyphant is here as the drug dealer Todd, a sarcastic and dark character that suits the actor’s style and shows how he’d play a darker type even before he was Raylan Givens in Justified. This is just an absolute who’s who of late 1990s actors, many of whom were either stars on TV or would become famous in films soon after. And seeing them all here, carrying this movie, really gets you to pay attention.

Through it all, though, it’s Liman’s steady hand that brings the film together. He has a solid eye for comedy and drama, and he can direct really great action. Everything you’d expect from the director in his later works is on display here, in a kind of miniature, in Go. This was a great showcase for all the director could do, his staging and character direction, getting the best from his players in every scene, and it’s a real pity more people didn’t get to see it in theaters.

Hell, I didn’t even discover the film until it was on VHS. I found it while working at Blockbuster, and I enjoyed it so much I grabbed a copy for myself as soon as I could. I’ve had a soft spot for the film ever since, popping it on every few years because it’s still just as entertaining today as it was back in 1999. It’s just this wild little anthology that gets going and never stops. Go is a great little film, one that’s worth going to (or going back to) so you can enjoy all it has to offer. It might not have been a success back in the day, but the fans who found it appreciate all its fun moments and weird little beats. It’s just a good time.