Review: Go

From the beautiful babies of Las Vegas (Money, baby!) to the teetering toddlers of a little helltown called Los Angeles. The kids are definitely not all right in Doug Liman's sophomore effort Go. They fall into one misadventure after another; most come out battered, bloody and bruised.

Twenty-seven year old screenwriter John August takes his cue from Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, where interlocking stories are played out from different perspectives. Let's first take a look at Ronna (Sarah Polley). She's 18 and about to be evicted. She's been pulling double shifts at the grocery store where she and friends Claire (Katie Holmes) and Mannie (Nathan Bexton) work as checkout cashiers but she still hasn't raised the money she needs. So when she's approached by Brit and fellow checkout cashier Simon (Desmond Askew) to cover his shift while he and his friends go off to Vegas for the weekend, she accepts.

During her shift, Ronna meets Adam (Scott Wolf) and Zack (Jay Mohr), who invite her to a rave and are looking to score 20 hits of Ecstasy. Since Simon, who's their usual contact, is out of town, could she take care of it for them? Sensing a chance to make more money, Ronna agrees and heads over to drug dealer Todd Gaines' (Timothy Olyphant) house. After much cajoling and agreeing to leave the reluctant Claire as collateral, Ronna gets the drugs and heads over to meet up with Adam and Zack. But something feels very wrong when the boys bring a very fidgety friend named Burke (William Fichtner) along to the transaction. She gets rid of the drugs and gets out fast. But she'll collide with Adam and Zack again.

Ronna doesn't know it but Adam and Zack are actually soap opera actors who happen to be real-life lovers. Busted for drug possession (who in this movie isn't taking any drugs?), they agree to help Burke with his drug sting to get their charges dropped. They end up spending the rest of the night trying to get rid of a girl's presumably dead body, bickering over past infidelities and sitting through a creepy dinner with Burke and his salaciously provocative wife (Jane Krakowski), both of whom seem to be into the idea of swapping mates. At least, that's what Adam and Zack think. The Adam and Zack segment is perhaps the best of the film, if only because the tone of it is so genuinely unpredictable and the quartet of Wolf, Mohr, Fichtner and Krakowski perfectly capture the oddball rhythm of the piece.

The last piece of the puzzle has to do with Simon and his pals -- Marcus (Taye Diggs), Tiny (Breckin Meyer) and Singh (James Duval) -- during their wild night in Vegas. Let's just say a lap dance is had, an arm bears a bullet and a chase ensues through the neon-lit streets of the biggest little city in the U.S.A. Along with the L.A. rave scene, this is probably the most boisterous in the film and it might have been more exhilarating if Peter Berg's Very Bad Things hadn't already covered the same territory.

Liman isn't quite the daring wunderkind that Tarantino was on Pulp Fiction. He makes up for the weak narrative by infusing Go with a high-octane visual style. The camera jumps and jitters and it's a blast when Liman brings Mannie's Ecstasy-induced hallucinations to life. Though the telepathic communication between Mannie and a black cat is a scream, it doesn't quite top the Macarena-on-acid twirl between Mannie and a checkout cashier.

The hip young cast is at their hip young best though some strike poses more than others. Holmes, a mournful and unaffected beauty, is such a presence and actress in the making. I hope she'll find a role onscreen that will showcase her as strongly as Dawson's Creek. I'm still not sure what all the fuss surrounding Polley is about. She was good in The Sweet Hereafter but she hasn't really moved beyond the attitudinal acting. Best of all is Breckin Meyer as the white homeboy banging the drum on his blackness, though Olyphant pleads a strong case as Todd the good drug dealer with a fondness for violence.​

Go

Directed by: Doug Liman

Written by: John August

Starring: Sarah Polley, Katie Holmes, Timothy Olyphant, Jay Mohr, Scott Wolf, Taye Diggs, Breckin Meyer, James Duval, William Fichtner, Jane Krakowski, Nathan Bexton, Desmond Askew, Melissa McCarthy