Cinema: The Brat Pack Hits Paydirt

The one thing that’s clear from the glut of contemporary teenpix is that a lot of young talent is being wasted in gonadal junk. If only these kids could find a smart script and a director who knew how to harness their coltish appeal, they might quickly turn promise into achievement. As it happens, the wait wasn’t all that long. Here is a picture that has wit, a hairpin-turn narrative, high pizazz and ensemble star quality. Ready, set, Go.

To judge from the script by John August (a comer; no, an arriver), Ralph’s Market in Hollywood is stocked with sirloin starlets. Katie Holmes, she of the angel-slut face, is there from Dawson’s Creek. Sarah Polley–with Creature-from-the-Black-Lagoon eyes and a mouth born to pout (some clever director will cast her as Heather Graham’s younger, savvier sister)–is a cashier. Party of Five’s dreamboat Scott Wolf is in Polley’s check-out line. The film isn’t five minutes old and already you suspect you’ll be entranced even if it stinks.

It doesn’t stink. August and director Doug Liman, of that lovely L.A. fable Swingers, have many amusing tricks to play on you. Ronna (Polley) is substituting for Simon (Desmond Askew), now off to Vegas, who retails drugs on the side. Soap opera stars Adam (Wolf) and Zack (Jay Mohr) want to buy some from Ronna, who needs rent money. Claire (Holmes) thinks that’s all very cool, until she is left as collateral with Simon’s evil wholesaler Todd (Timothy Olyphant). The movie is rather too frolicsome about drug use, but it carries an internal message: if you’re on dope, you won’t be able to follow the plot.

It’s worth following because it forks into a second story–Simon and his friend Marcus (Taye Diggs) go to a Vegas lap-dance parlor and play with gunfire–and a third, involving Adam, Zack and a narc (William Fichtner) who comes on to them like a Mark Fuhrman on Viagra. Though some of these folks shade into their 30s, all act like teenagers. The movie is set on Christmas Eve, but emotionally it’s Mischief Night, when kids will do anything for the freewheeling hell of it. They fool around as if there were no tomorrow, not caring that tomorrow is…Halloween.

Go is that kind of four-on-the-floor joyride, seemingly heedless of Hollywood story conventions as it spins from one attractive group of actors to the next. When Polley disappears after 40 minutes, you may feel no one can take her place; then Diggs (our choice for Afro-fab star of the future) assumes center screen and is just as beguiling. Wolf is delightfully disdainful of getting an ear kiss from the narc’s free-love wife: “And that ear thing. I have Q-Tips, thank you.” Olyphant is also an accomplished hunk. In fact, why not round up the entire cast for a sequel? Call it Keep Going.

O.K., the car chases and gunplay don’t work as well as the character comedy does. The movie has so many different set pieces that it sometimes looks like Liman’s demo reel. And all right, you’ve seen these elements before–but rarely so engagingly assembled. With its three-part structure framing a story of drugs and smart talk, but also with a heart so understanding that it lets nobody die, Go is a prime example of Tarantino cute: pup fiction.

–R.C.