Go (1999/Sony Blu-ray)

 

Picture: B-     Sound: B     Extras: C-     Film: C-

 

 

Before Doug Liman became a home run box office player for the studios, he made smaller films and one of the earliest that got so carried away with its slickness to the point of imploding on itself is Go, a 1999 attempt to follow-up Swingers with another hip hit.  The film did not do that well and has become a curio as his work in-between his earliest hit and big hits after.  The tale of fast living goes by so fast that it is trite.

 

Katie Holmes and Sarah Polley are best friends and the latter needs the former to be with her on an illicit drug deal so she can pay her rent.  That leads to them meeting other desperate characters, many of whom are strangers and others of whom are also interested in their own quick goals.  Jay Mohr and Scott Wolf are friends involved in several illicit things that are not immediately apparent, while William Fichtner has some eccentric approaches to things and Desmond Askew plays a guy dead set on going to Las Vegas.

 

To say there is a lack of character development here is an understatement, with writer John August being the kind of writer who is more miss (Titan A.E., Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle) than hit (the first Charlie’s Angels) and has been recently working with an artistically stuck Tim Burton (but at least he did not pen the Planet Of The Apes remake) and this is more typical of his poor work.  Taye Diggs and Jane Krakowski also show up, but this never adds up to nothing but chaos with people we never get to learn about, care about and could care less about.  Swingers has nothing to worry about.

 

The 1080p digital High Definition image was shot on Super 35mm film by Liman himself and though he gets some good shots in, the editing ruins any chance for the visuals to work and this transfer is on the soft side throughout and softer than the best 35mm footage I have seen on the film.  The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix is a little better with a decent surround mix, yet it has its share of overkill.  Even the BT/Moby score cannot save this and Moby complained about his redo of the James Bond theme being in Tomorrow Never Dies.

 

Extras include 3 Music Videos, 14 deleted scenes that do not help, a making of featurette and feature length audio commentary with Liman and Editor Stephen Mirrione trying to explain what they were doing.  Too late.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo