
April 10, 2000
9 / 10
(This was actually a paper I wrote for an Economics class ("Economics in the Movies") - one of those easy credit courses. So watch out - it's long, and has lots of economic analysis in it.)
Doug Liman’s Go is a film that explores the underground world of drugs, crime, and rave culture. It is a comedy, albeit a dark one, that weaves the adventures of many young characters in L.A. into one story. This story is told from three points of view, which are given to the viewer in three separate parts. Each part relays the events of the same night from a different perspective.
The first point of view is that of an eighteen-year-old girl named Ronna, played by Sarah Polley. Ronna’s initial dilemma is that she is about to be evicted from her apartment because she doesn't have enough money for rent. To get more cash, she takes another shift at her grocery store from her coworker Simon. While she is working, two young men – Adam and Zack - come through her checkout looking for Simon. They were planning to buy drugs from him, but Ronna ends up doing the deal herself.
Ronna goes to Simon’s dealer, Todd, to get the drugs. She's trying to buy twenty hits of ecstasy. She has two hundred dollars but Todd insists on charging three hundred (fifteen for each pill). Ronna and Todd eventually come to a peculiar agreement – Ronna treats the two-hundred dollars she has as a down payment, and leaves her friend Claire at Todd’s house as collateral.
When she brings the drugs to Adam and Zack’s place, however, she becomes suspicious of them. She eventually realizes she's being set up by the police. Fearing being arrested, she goes to their bathroom and flushes all the E down the toilet. She then tells them that she couldn’t get the drugs and leaves. After stealing some pharmaceutical pills from the grocery store, she takes them to Todd, passing them off as the real ones he gave her. Ronna eventually goes to a rave to sell the rest of the fake pills she stole to unsuspecting people, passing them off as hallucinogenics. Everything seems to be going well until Todd discovers he’s been cheated and comes after her with his gun. As Ronna is running away from him in a parking lot, she is hit by an oncoming car and is thrown mercilessly into a ditch.
Ronna’s behaviour can be examined through thinking about the incentives she had for engaging in crime. First of all, she is desperate for the rent money she owes. She is so desperate that she is willing to take another shift, even though she has already worked fourteen hours that day. Although she wouldn’t normally deal drugs, she jumps at the opportunity under her circumstances. She needs money immediately and she would get more from selling the drugs in one night than she could get from the grocery store all week. She is also desperate enough to leave her best friend alone at a stranger’s house for a few hours.
Since Ronna lives on her own, she doesn’t have parents to answer to. There isn’t anyone to supervise her or stop her from staying out all night. Her job is also not very important to her and she doesn’t mind risking it. She therefore wouldn’t have a large economic rent – she could find another similar job relatively easily.
It is also evident that Ronna isn’t happy with her job. She finds it very tedious and uninteresting, which gives her an incentive to search for more excitement – whether it be the rush from the drug deal or just from partying at the rave. All in all, she feels that she has nothing to lose and that the benefits of her situation outweigh the costs.
The second perspective in the movie is from Simon’s point of view. The reason Simon offers his shift to Ronna is so he can go to Las Vegas for the weekend with his friends. When they get to Las Vegas, Simon gets himself into a large amount of trouble. After seducing two bridesmaids from a wedding chapel, the threesome goes up to a hotel room to smoke some marijuana, among other things. Accidentally, a curtain catches on fire and they are too preoccupied to notice. When he notices the hotel room is blazing with flames, Simon flees the hotel. He and his friend Marcus wind up stealing a car as Marcus is mistaken for a valet. They take the car to a topless bar, where they get into more trouble. During a fight with a bouncer, Simon pulls out a gun he found in the stolen car and defensively shoots the bouncer in the arm. They run from the strip club and go back to their hotel to pack up their things and make a hasty departure. However, they are followed by the strip club owners and eventually a reckless car chase is ensued. In the process, both cars get seriously damaged, along with numerous other vehicles.
In offering the shift to Ronna, both Ronna and Simon get what they want. This is good example of market forces at work. A transaction occurs when there is demand for the supply. Simon is supplying the shift to Ronna, and in exchange he is getting freedom. The small market created by the two of them is efficient, because, as Simon states, “everybody wins.” (Liman 1999) The other market that exists between the pair is one for drugs. Ronna complains that Simon tries to cheat her, but as Todd says, “at that level you’re supposed to pinch, it’s the economics of it.” (Liman 1999) Since Simon has no competitors he is able to charge what he wants.
Simon is out to have all the fun he can get, no matter what the cost is. He and his friends get psychic benefits out of the criminal behaviour they get involved in. Unfortunately their behaviour has unfavourable repercussions. The hotel room burning down can be seen as a negative externality of the drug-induced state Simon and the girls were in. Another negative externality is the damage done to the cars.
The third and final point of view revolves around Adam and Zack. The two of them are soap opera actors who were arrested for drug possession. The man that caught them, Burke, has made a bargain with them. He promises to drop the charges against them if they lead him to Simon, their dealer. Since Ronna is working Simon’s shift for him, Adam and Zack can’t pull Simon into their trap, so they get Ronna to do the drug deal in hopes of finding Simon.
When Ronna gets to Adam and Zack’s house the same story unfolds, except this time around the viewer sees some new and important details. Just before Ronna heads toward the bathroom, Zack steps towards her and whispers the crucial word “GO” in her ear, letting her know that she is in trouble.
Although they didn’t catch Ronna or Simon, Burke agrees to drop the charges against Adam and Zack. But before he agrees to let them go, he gets them to stay for dinner with him and his wife. The couple has an ulterior motive for asking Adam and Zack to stay – along with trying to seduce the boys, they want to recruit them to sell confederated products.
After leaving Burke’s house, Adam and Zack go to the rave. When they leave the rave, the viewer is let in on another important detail. As Ronna is running away from Todd, it is actually Adam and Zack’s car that hits her and sends her into the ditch.
After Adam and Zack speed away from the scene, they soon realize that they can’t hide what they just did. They had had recording devices wired to them for the drug bust, which they still had on, so everything they had done was on tape. They then go back to the scene of the crime and plan to get rid of Ronna’s body. But they find her to be still alive, so they leave her atop a honking car until an ambulance comes.
Burke’s decision to go after Ronna to get Simon might be seen as an opportunity cost. In pursuing Ronna, they are forgoing time and resources that could be spent tracking down Simon.
Zack telling Ronna to go could be seen as an altruistic act. Although Zack knows what it’s like to be caught and he’s trying to spare Ronna from that, from an economic perspective it makes little sense for him to help her. He is lessening the chance of her being caught and therefore risking his own chance of getting freed from the charges against him.
Adam and Zack also had to consider the costs and benefits of going back to help Ronna. Zack rationalized their decision to leave her there by saying, “if she’s alive, then that guy with the gun would have killed her anyway. So even if she’s alive, she’s dead.” (Liman 1999)
In the hierarchy of the drug dealing industry, we have three levels. Adam and Zack are on the bottom level. Simon is their dealer, so he is a level above them. Todd, Simon’s dealer, is at the top of the hierarchy. Perhaps there is someone still above Todd, but that is not shown in the film. In selling the drugs to Adam and Zack, Ronna is bypassing Simon. As her friend, Mannie, puts it: “isn’t that an evolutionary leap? You’re moving up the drug food chain without permission.” (Liman 1999)
In the end of the movie, the strip club owners track Simon down in L.A. Simon used Todd’s credit card (an act of fraud) at both the hotel and the topless bar, and he left it behind at the bar during the fight with the bouncer. The two strip club owners use the credit card to locate Todd’s apartment, where they wait until Simon coincidentally shows up looking for a place to hide. The strip club owners travel all the way from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, which shows they are highly motivated to get their revenge on Simon. Simon is willing to settle it “civilly” and he voluntarily lets them shoot him in the arm.
In the end we also see that Ronna makes it out alive and well. She did make enough money to pay off her rent, which was $380. She made $400 from selling the medicine at the rave. Somewhat dazed, she limps back into the grocery store ready to do it all again.
Why do people get involved in criminal behaviour? When anyone is faced with an opportunity to commit a crime, they always compare the costs and benefits of the situation. In this film, the characters are all young and feel they have nothing to lose. They all take risks in order to have a good time, yet there is always a cost that comes with the risky behaviour.
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