Go (1999)
Grade: A-
Cast: Sarah Polley, Katie Holmes, Timothy Olyphant, Desmond Askew, Jay Mohr, Scott Wolf, Taye Diggs, William Fichtner, Breckin Meyer
Director: Doug Liman
Rated R for strong drug content, sexuality, nudity, language, and some violence


Pulp Fiction Rip-Off Checklist

1. Lotsa Drugs: In “Pulp Fiction”, you could rarely find a scene that didn’t in some way involve, reference, or depend on drugs. One of the dramatic highpoints was when John Travolta’s Vincent Vega had to revive an “OD’ed bitch” (Uma Thurman). Because of such a consistent dependence on drugs, any “Pulp Fiction” wannabe without them is going to be forever stuck in the realm of wannabe. “Go” is just as drug-oriented as “Pulp Fiction”, maybe more. It involves Ronna (Sarah Polley, finding the perfect tone for her role), who is taking Simon’s (Desmond Askew) shift at the grocery store they work at so Simon can go to Vegas with some friends. Ronna gets caught up with a drug dealer, Todd (Timothy Olyphant) and to ruin anymore would be to obliterate potential fun, so I won’t, but she spends most of her storyline trying to make money by selling drugs, which may involve double-crossing Todd.

2. Bizarre Sex: Sex (portrayed strangely here, like in “Pulp”), as the invaluable IMDb points out, is seen as something of a bad omen in “Go” (the bad omen in “Pulp Fiction” is John Travolta going to the bathroom). The IMDb cites Simon’s sex with two girls in the hotel room (it sets on fire), the private lap dance (it goes wrong, trust me, but I won’t say how), and Todd’s head/favor analogy (Ronna screws him over when he gives her a favor). One could also add that a gay couple goes to pay back a man who has sexually cheated with both of them, and this is followed with an accidental killing, despite the fact that that isn't exactly sex but the aftermath to sex. How does all this connect to “Pulp”? Remember—“Zed’s dead, baby. Zed’s dead.” How’s that for the aftermath to bizarre sex?

3. Quirky Pop Culture Dialogues: In “Pulp”, Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent talk about such things as the cleanliness of eating bacon, what exactly a television pilot is, and what fast food is like in Amsterdam. “Go” is quite the “Pulp Fiction” rip-off. We get monologues and dialogue exchanges like this on more than one occasion (including many minutes of the running time dedicated to explaining Tantric sex, but I won’t get into that), but the most noticeable is in one of the last scenes, where Todd talks about the value (or lack thereof) of the comic strip ‘Family Circus’. “It’s always there, just waiting to suck,” he complains. “Why do you read it?” one character reasonably inquires. “I hate it,” he replies, “but I’m drawn to it.”

4. Reversed Timelines: Without ruining too much, I will say that “Go” does a good job of duplicating the weird story structure of any film of the “Pulp Fiction” genre. In “Go”, our three main characters are introduced in the opening moments, all at a grocery story. We meet Ronna, who gets her own story; we meet Simon, whose storyline mostly takes place in Vegas; and we meet Zack (Jay Mohr) and Adam (Scott Wolf), gay soap opera stars who get involved with a lonely married cop (William Fichtner) trying to catch a drug dealer, and also experience new things. Like in “Pulp”, the stories eventually overlap, making for something that is clever enough to put a grin on our face, and even get an astonished chuckle or two from us, but not enough to wow us in the way “Pulp” did…only because we’ve already seen it.

There’s more criteria than that (including an amusing, really cool soundtrack consisting of a few new songs as well as oldies), and “Go” fits almost all of it. Here’s the shocker, though: “Go” is a great movie when looked at on its own. I can’t imagine watching it without thinking of “Pulp Fiction” (which, of course, is a bit better), but “Go” doesn’t graduate from the University of Tarantino Rip-offs for the lone reason that it doesn’t want to be seen as a rip-off. It has funny, exciting things to show us without stealing from Tarantino, even if it means borrowing his style and presentation of material.

The film’s energy is amazing. It grabs onto you from the opening moments, and never quite lets go. Its adrenaline rubs off, too; after letting myself be sucked into the fictional world of “Go”, I came back to reality disappointed that the real world wasn’t as exciting as the world of these characters.

“Go” has the perfect example of an ensemble cast (well, “Gosford Park”’s is perfect, but this collage of eccentric people will do too). Sarah Polley creates a great character—not the script, although I suppose Ronna’s quirky dialogue is a serviceable aspect of Polley’s overall effectiveness; Katie Holmes, as in “The Ice Storm”, “The Gift”, and “Wonder Boys”, proves that she is a good actress and not just a pretty face from “Dawson’s Creek”; Olyphant, as I said, is just great, humorously finding a balance between intimidating control and sardonic cynicism; Mohr and Wolf aren’t bad at all—they’re quite good—but they don’t stand out in comparison to the rest of the cast; Askew is very funny; Fichtner is filled with a curiosity and hopefulness that he makes easy to sympathize with; I didn’t like how stuck up Taye Diggs’s character was, but he was good in the part; Breckin Meyer (“Road Trip”, “Rat Race”) is pretty amusing as a “wigger” traveling with Simon in Vegas.

I can’t pretend I didn’t occasionally have problems with the derision in “Go” (not the fact itself that “Go was being derivative, but the way it would sometimes try to get away with it without acknowledging its sources), and I realize that thinking about it too much after viewing can reveal gaping logic holes. Ultimately, though, “Go” can get away with its sins because it does what it does about as well as it can be done without becoming a classic like “Pulp Fiction”. “Fiction”’s extremely un-preachy message brilliantly came into play in the final scene; “Go” has nothing so profound, but does manage to be a giddy cinematic high, which is perhaps the most appropriate metaphor one could come up with for this particular movie.


-Alex, October 2002