A Perfectly Engineered Night of Disaster

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MOVIE REVIEWS
Go
–

Genre: Comedy, Crime, Thriller
Year Released: 1999, 2026 4K
Runtime: 1h 42m
Director: Doug Liman
Writer: John August
Cast: Sarah Polley, Desmond Askew, Katie Holmes, Timothy Olyphant, Jay Mohr, Scott Wolf, Taye Diggs, William Fichtner, Breckin Meyer, James Duval
Where to Watch: available now; order your copy here: www.arrowvideo.com, www.mvdshop.com, or www.amazon.com

RAVING REVIEW: GO feels like someone preserved a particular corner of 1999 before anyone realized it was worth saving. The clothes, grocery-store jobs, pagers, raves, casual drug use, soundtrack, and general lack of concern about making a responsible decision all belong to a specific moment, yet Doug Liman's movie has survived considerably better than plenty of films that were supposed to represent their generation more seriously.

Part of the reason is simple: GO moves. John August's screenplay doesn't spend much time convincing us these characters are important, and Liman doesn't wait for them to explain themselves. People need money, want drugs, want sex, want a weekend away, or simply want something more interesting than the shift they're currently working. Those relatively small desires keep crashing into other people making equally questionable choices.

Ronna Martin, played by Sarah Polley, needs money badly enough that taking over coworker Simon's shift at a grocery store seems like the beginning of a solution. When two customers want to buy ecstasy from Simon, Ronna sees another opportunity and decides she can handle the transaction herself. She cannot, but watching her repeatedly refuse to admit it becomes one of the movie's best running gags.

Polley makes Ronna easy to follow without softening her into someone we're required to approve of. She's smart enough to understand the trouble forming around her and desperate enough to keep pushing anyway, even after turning to dealer Todd Gaines for help. Timothy Olyphant gives Todd exactly the right combination of charm and danger, making him seem relaxed right up until there's a reason not to.

Katie Holmes has a quieter job as Claire, Ronna's friend who gets pulled into the mess and eventually ends up spending time with Todd. Claire is one of the few people in GO who occasionally reacts like a normal human being would react to any of this. That becomes increasingly funny as everyone around her treats an escalating series of disasters as though they're simply inconveniences standing between them and the rest of the night.

Just when Ronna's story seems ready to become the movie, GO starts over.

That reset remains one of its smartest moves, although it comes with a risk. Simon, played by Desmond Askew, spends the first section largely as the missing coworker whose absence gave Ronna her opportunity. Then the movie jumps backward and follows him to Las Vegas with Marcus, Tiny, and Singh, immediately revealing that Simon has been busy creating an entirely different catastrophe.

The Vegas section is broader and more openly ridiculous than Ronna's story. Simon approaches nearly every situation with confidence that isn't supported by good judgment, and Askew understands that the character gets funnier the more certain he is that everything will somehow work out. Taye Diggs, Breckin Meyer, and James Duval give him exactly the group he needs, with everyone contributing a different level of concern as the trip gets progressively worse.

That section is also where GO comes closest to overplaying its hand. Simon's adventure can occasionally feel like the movie wandered into a different comedy, and some of the jokes have aged better than others. Yet the reckless momentum keeps it moving, while details that initially seem isolated gradually begin connecting back to people and events we've already seen. Then August does it again.

The third perspective follows soap-opera actors Adam and Zack, played by Scott Wolf and Jay Mohr, whose involvement with narcotics officer Burke turns out to be considerably stranger than the simple undercover setup suggested earlier. William Fichtner is hilarious because Burke never behaves quite the way Adam and Zack expect him to behave, and the prolonged visit to his home with his wife Irene, played by Jane Krakowski, becomes one of those sequences where ordinary friendliness somehow feels increasingly threatening.

An underlying joke runs throughout GO about how badly people read situations. Ronna thinks she can make an easy drug deal. Simon thinks Vegas will be harmless fun. Adam and Zack repeatedly misunderstand Burke. Characters constantly assume they know what's happening because they've identified the type of situation they're in, only for some new piece of information to make their confidence look ridiculous.

That structure gives the movie much of its staying power. Watching three stories overlap isn't impressive simply because August found places to connect them. The fun comes from seeing scenes differently once another section provides information we didn't have the first time, sometimes turning a background detail into a joke or making a seemingly random encounter unexpectedly important.

It's tempting to reduce all of this to PULP FICTION because GO arrived when nonlinear crime movies were everywhere. The comparison isn't completely unfair, and the film itself clearly belongs to the post-Tarantino era, but GO has its own personality. Its characters aren't criminals exchanging philosophical speeches about crime and morality. They're young people doing stupid things because they need rent money, want to party, or haven't learned yet that confidence isn't the same as competence.

August's screenplay grew out of what became the first section, and that origin makes sense when you see how tightly Ronna's portion is constructed. Expanding outward instead of simply stretching that story was the better decision because it allows the movie to keep restarting its energy. Each perspective shifts the comedy slightly while still moving toward the same increasingly crowded night.

Liman matches that structure with direction that rarely looks too clean. GO benefits from feeling close to its characters, particularly inside the rave and during the more frantic nighttime sequences. The camera and editing have a looseness that could have become exhausting, but it generally fits people moving through a night they don't completely understand themselves.

The cast now makes the movie even more entertaining for reasons nobody could have fully appreciated in 1999. Polley, Holmes, Olyphant, Diggs, Fichtner, Meyer, Mohr, Wolf, Askew, and even an early Melissa McCarthy appearance create the strange experience of watching a collection of familiar performers before many of their careers had settled into the identities we associate with them now. Olyphant is particularly enjoyable because so much of the relaxed menace that became one of his strengths is already sitting there.

Arrow Video's new 4K edition is a fitting excuse to revisit the movie because GO is exactly the kind of title that can get lost between major studio classics and more obvious cult favorites. The Dolby Vision presentation gives the nighttime photography, fluorescent interiors, Vegas lights, and rave sequences room to look better without erasing the character of a movie made in 1999. The original 5.1 mix also matters for something this dependent on music and crowded environments.

The extras don't treat the release like a bare upgrade either. John August returns for a new interview, Desmond Askew gets one of his own, Liman and editor Stephen Mirrione's archival commentary is included, and 14 deleted scenes appear alongside the usual supporting material. The inclusion of August's short GOD, made using leftover film stock from GO and featuring Melissa McCarthy, is exactly the kind of strange production-history bonus that makes a physical release more interesting than simply putting the feature on another disc.

GO isn't flawless enough for nostalgia to erase its weaker pieces. The Vegas story runs a little broader than the other two, a few characters get far less development than the ensemble around them, and some late-1990s attitudes have aged in ways the movie obviously couldn't anticipate. Those rough edges don't hurt much because the film never presents itself as a carefully polished portrait of thoughtful people.

These characters are impulsive, selfish, horny, broke, scared, overconfident, and occasionally lucky enough to survive their own decisions. That's the point, and Liman never seems interested in judging them for behaving like young adults who believe one terrible night can still become a great story if they make it to the following morning.

More than 25 years later, GO hasn't survived because it perfectly captured what young people were like in 1999. It survives because it remembers how exciting it can feel when you're young enough to mistake complete disorder for freedom. The pagers and rave culture may lock it firmly into its era, but the bad decisions haven't aged a day.

Bonus Materials:
4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS
4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
Original lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
Brand new audio commentary with critics Bryan Reesman and Max Evry
Archival audio commentary with director Doug Liman and editor Stephen Mirrione
From the Word Go, a brand new interview with screenwriter, co-producer, and second unit director John August
A View Askew, a brand new interview with actor Desmond Askew
Archival making-of featurette
14 deleted scenes
God, John August’s 1998 short film featuring Melissa McCarthy, shot using the short ends of film stock from the production of Go with much of the same crew, presented in high definition for the first time on home video.
Optional audio commentary on God with John August, Melissa McCarthy, and editor Douglas Crise
Theatrical trailer
Image gallery
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Ben Beach
Collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film by David Michael Brown and Michelle Kisner, and original production notes

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