Shaun de Waal Movie of the week
The fractured multi-narrative of Pulp Fiction won Quentin Tarantino the admiration of filmgoers capable of understanding something more than the routine reorganisation of cinematic clichs. Such a device may not have been very new to anyone who has read a few mildly ambitious novels (or seen Akira Kurosawa’s 1951 film Rashomon), but the fact that it worked so well surprised a Hollywood dedicated to the “linear” plot.
Doug Liman’s new movie, Go, from an excellent script by John August – who must get at least as much credit as the director, if not more – constructs itself in a way similar to Pulp Fiction. It has three “chapters”, each taking its primary viewpoint from a different character or set of characters, and each starting at the same moment.
That moment is when weary check-out girl Ronna (Sarah Polley) gets a potential reprieve from looming eviction: she is offered an extra shift at the supermarket by her British friend Simon (Desmond Askew), who is going to Las Vegas with friends. A little later, she will get a futher opportunity to top up her bank balance when two young men (Jay Mohr and Scott Wolf), apparently used to dealing with the now absent Simon, ask her if she can get hold of some ecstasy for them. Later we will backtrack to this moment and pick up the story from the perspective of Simon or from that of the two would-be drug-buyers. The whole wraps itself up in a time-span of 24 hours.
To say much more would be to spoil a movie that manages its narrative surprises with exceptional deftness, and with a streak of pleasingly wicked black humour. One can say, though, that the various kinds of trouble these young people get themselves into make for sterling entertainment as we go back to “go” and rush off on further elaborations of the unfolding plot(s). (Chapter one was originally intended by August to be a short film, but characters like Simon practically begged for further exploration.)
The cast’s work is impressive. Polley as Ronna has the right mix of vulnerability and enterprising grit – we’ll see more of her. Askew is hilarious as the opportunistic hedonist Simon, and Taye Diggs, as his mate Marcus, with whom he visits Vegas, is elegant and poised. Nathan Bexton makes a convincing and not unlikeable drug-dealer, and Wolf and Mohr play their pivotal parts with assurance. William Fichtner is quite brilliant as a creepy cop.
Go is engrossing, amusing and slickly shot. Go see it.