In between car crashes and characters shrieking at each other (the film's title is repeated often by desperate characters peeling out of impossible situations), the director inserts some small, witty moments of odd couplings and strange fantasies that tickle in all the right places. It's in those elusive bursts that everything almost comes together. As in "Swingers," there's a dizzying, stop-you-in-your-tracks dance sequence -- although this one takes place partly in a produce aisle and entirely in the tripped-out imagination of a minor character. There are also weirdly satisfying moments of bickering, exasperated glances and stolen kisses.

The film becomes less interesting when it apes the massively overplayed affable-hoodlum genre (most recently and successfully demonstrated in "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels"). Ronna, Simon, Adam and Zack are way out of their depths, but the gods must love amateurs, because they keep bobbing up for air just in the nick of time. And we need another petty-criminals-in-hot-water caper about as much as we need to be told "Family Circus" sucks -- which, by the way, someone in the film tells us, at length.

But if the premise of the film lacks imagination, the cast doesn't. Desmond Askew, as an impish everyman Brit gorging himself at the buffet of Yankee overindulgence, sports such a wicked look of pleasure -- even when he's being shot at -- that he seems to have sprung straight from hell's junior division. Jay Mohr, who has a tendency to overplay in characters that are underwritten, is surprisingly appealing here, in no small part because most of the time he's trying desperately to keep a straight face in order to save his neck. And Sarah Polley, an actress with the biggest eyes and spindliest legs this side of a Keane painting, has a deadpan delivery and a tough Teflon sheen that makes her the most watchable thing in "Go." She's the slightly crazy friend we've all had -- the delicate flower who plunges boldly into danger and winds up surprising everybody. The rest of the players are, by and large, equally adept. If only they had more moments to interact with each other and fewer to dream up half-baked plans for sticking it to the suckers.

After a shooting in a strip club goes awry, a disgusted older character laments that in days gone by, you succeeded by being better than the person in front of you. Now, he observes, you get ahead by being slightly less incompetent than the guy on top. It's not the most encouraging sentiment ever expressed, but it's one the filmmakers anxiously espouse. The secret to getting by, it seems, is to find someone dumber than yourself you can exploit -- and it's rarely that challenging a search. That "one born every minute" premise injects a smug dose of superiority into an otherwise genial adventure, and betrays a cynical lack of imagination. "Go" doesn't know quite what it wants to be -- it's too good-natured to be a true crime story and too "edgy" to be a straightforward comedy. Liman's buoyant direction is almost enough to make one forgive the film its heavily appropriated plot (including its groaner of a punchline). The elusive script fit for Liman's talents has got to be out there somewhere -- this is, after all, the land of opportunity.
salon.com | April 9, 1999

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