GENRE | Ready, Set, 'Go' – Riding the Late-'90s Hyperlink Cinema Wave

"Pardon me if I'm not in a holly jolly mood right now!"

Sony Pictures

During the tail end of the 1990s American independent film movement, director Doug Liman's sophomore 1999 feature, Go, rode the wave of the hyperlink cinema trend sparked by the popular influence and acclaim of Pulp Fiction (see also Magnolia, released the same year as Go). Somewhat forgotten and dwarfed by the phenomenon of The Matrix, Go was still a mild success at the box office that slowly grew into an alternative Christmas cult classic on DVD.

Starring Sarah Polley, Katie Holmes, Taye Diggs, a particularly youthfully villainous Timothy Olyphant as a sketchy drug dealer, and many other touchstone television actors of the era trying to transition into movies, the action unfolds from three different but intertwining character perspectives with successive points of view presented to get the whole story in a complex multi-linear fashion. It's a cinematic time capsule that perfectly captures our collective transition from a pre-internet culture into the new millennium.

From an early screenplay by well-known Hollywood script doctor and Scriptnotes podcast co-host John August, the film has an economical pace, famously parodied in The Simpsons episode "Trilogy of Error." Polley's grocery store cashier needs rent money and is desperate for cash when this leads her and her co-workers into a series of sordid shenanigans involving selling fake ecstasy pills, evading undercover cops, and a detour to Las Vegas in conflict with some shady strip club proprietors.

Go, and its novel take on the carbon copy film structure, is still ripe for rediscovery on streaming. It's currently available to stream on Netflix, and a limited edition Arrow Video 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray will be available on September 28th.


More | YVArcade / GQ / JoBlo / Polygon