Go

Deluxe Collector's Edition


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Details At A Glance

General
Extras
Category Comedy Theatrical Trailer(s) Yes, 1 - 2.35:1 16x9, Dolby Digital 2.0
Rating Other Trailer(s) Yes, 1 - Dolby Digital City
Year Released 1999 Commentary Tracks Yes, 1 - Doug Liman (Director/Cinematographer), Stephen Mirrione (Editor)
Running Time 97:50  Other Extras Main Menu Audio And Animation
Deleted Scenes, 14 (approximately 25 minutes)
Behind The Scenes Featurette (6:22)
Cast & Crew Biographies
Music Videos: 
  • No Doubt - New (4:33)
  • Philip Steir with Steppenwolf - Magic Carpet Ride (3:22)
  • LEN - Steal My Sunshine (3:57)
RSDL/Flipper RSDL (70:36)
Cast & Crew
Start Up Menu
Region 2, 4 Director Doug Liman
Studio
Distributor

Columbia Tristar
Starring Taye Diggs
William Fichtner
J.F. Freeman
Katie Holmes
Breckin Meyer
Jay Mohr
Timothy Olyphant
Sarah Polley
Scott Wolf
RRP $39.95 Music BT

 
Video
Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame None MPEG None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio 2.35:1 Dolby Digital 5.1
16x9 Enhancement Yes Soundtrack Languages English (Dolby Digital 5.1, 384 Kb/s)
German (Dolby Digital 5.1, 384 Kb/s)
English Director/Editor Commentary Track (Dolby Digital 2.0, 192 Kb/s)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio 2.35:1
Miscellaneous
Macrovision Yes Smoking Yes
Subtitles English
German
Dutch
Czech
Danish
Finnish
Greek
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Icelandic
Norwegian
Polish
Swedish
Turkish
German Audio Commentary
Dutch Audio Commentary
Annoying Product Placement Yes
Action In or After Credits No

Plot Synopsis

    Go is one of the first Deluxe Collector's Editions to be priced at the new higher point of $39.95, for reasons which I personally can only guess at. While it is true that it does have a bucketload of extras and transfer quality that a lot of films are begging for, it just doesn't have enough to justify the higher price, not by a long shot. However, being that this is a plot synopsis, I will get into that a little later. Suffice to say for now that I feel prices should be coming down, not going up, and this is just another blatant act of utter disregard for Region 4 customers from the major distributors. Anyway, for those who want a plot (finally, I hear you cry), here we go. Go is the story of a few twenty-somethings who, bored with their lives or desperate to fix a bad situation, go and do some very risky things. Ronna Martin (Sarah Polley) begins the proceedings by accepting an offer from Simon Baines (Desmond Askew in what is a fairly reasonable debut on his part) to take his shift at the local supermarket. Having accepted due to the desperation of her financial situation, Ronna finds herself being propositioned for drugs by two of Simon's customers: soap stars named Adam (Scott Wolf) and Zack (Jay Mohr). Her wheelings and dealings are the beginning of the seedy adventures of basically everyone in the film, including her best friend Claire Montgomery (Katie Holmes), whom she winds up using as collateral in a drug deal. In the long run, the characters play a back seat to the story, which basically revolves around how much can go wrong in one night.

    All kidding aside, this film could have been a lot better, in my view at least, with a different cast. Give the script to Ewan McGregor and he would have turned this into an award-winning romp. Go watch The Velvet Goldmine or Trainspotting sometime if you don't believe me. To make a long story short, this film does not have the sort of plot for which you simply take people from the cast of such TV shows as Dawson's Creek or Party Of Five and mix them together. The end result of doing this is that the acting is about as convincing, for me at least, as that in films like The Craft. The story is stereotypical, the characters are formulaic, and the replay value is minimal. If Columbia expect support for their heightened price point for "Deluxe Collector's Editions" when they are slapping the label on everything from Go to Universal Soldier: The Return, then I have six words for them: you have got to be [Ed. Seventh word deleted] joking.

Transfer Quality

Video

    The video transfer is of excellent quality. It would want to be, given that the film is less than a year old. I would almost say it is of reference quality, but given that the cinematography is comparatively ordinary (an unfortunate result of the cinematographer and the director being the same guy), I have to hold off on that. The film itself is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, complete with 16x9 enhancement. As I have hinted, there is very little in the cinematography to justify this aspect ratio. The film is mostly free of artefacts, with the credits suffering the only really noticeable artefact in the shape of some slight distortion and wobble. Other than that, however, it is more proof that the video quality is inversely proportional to the quality of the film. The picture is as sharp as the locations are dull, and the shadow detail is absolutely top-notch, except in some sequences outside the rave club. Some very minor MPEG artefacting could be seen in slow-moving scenes, which I believe may be the result of slight overcompression in order to fit all those worthless extras. The colours ranged from being appropriately drab to appropriately oversaturated. Essentially, this video transfer is remarkable in quality, but not in the same league as say, Dark City, for example.

    This disc is an RSDL disc, with the layer change coming at 70:36, between Chapters 18 and 19. This layer change is rather badly placed and sticks out like a bum note during a recital of the Star Wars soundtrack.

Audio

    Again, this portion of the transfer is inversely proportional to the quality of the actual film. The audio is presented in a choice of two languages, both in Dolby Digital 5.1, plus a commentary track in Dolby Digital 2.0 track. Because I don't speak German well enough to understand more than twenty percent of the dialogue, I left this audio track out of my listening experience. Given that this disc will also function in Region 2, and that this would also raise demand for audio dubs in French and Spanish, the choices seem to be a little limited for a "Deluxe Collector's Edition" (I am going to keep rubbing Columbia's nose in this at every chance during this review, so please bear with me). I will be saving my comments on the commentary track for the extras, so let's just dive right into the rest of the audio transfer, shall we?

    The dialogue was almost always clear and easy to understand. The only exceptions would be dialogue that took place during the nightclub scenes, and even then, it was very rare to have any real difficulty in making out what the actors were saying. When this did occur, there wasn't exactly a great need to make out what was being said, anyway. Not that there ever was at any point in the film, but the dialogue was unnaturally easy to hear. Audio sync wasn't a problem, although there appeared to be a slight distortion with lip movements in some sequences, due to the speed of speech.

    According to the packaging, there is original music by a curiously named BT in the film. I must have blinked and utterly missed it. If they are honestly referring to the dance club music as his "score", then they have honestly got to be kidding. I've heard eight year olds with Casios compose better music than this nondescript, ordinary drivel. There's interesting techno-based music (such as Aphex Twin, G.G.F.H., and the like) and then there's the fodder in this film. Do I really need to say any more?

    The center and rear speakers got a real workout. For the most part, they were used to enhance the music and the dialogue, which was just fine because separating these two beasts was definitely necessary during this film. The subwoofer also played a small part with these sounds, as well as the standard car crash and gunshot sounds. Overall, the sound was very appropriate to the depth and required division of the sounds that made up the actual mix of the film, although some channels will spend a little time sitting idle.

Extras

    I'll give Columbia this much: they have included a great number of extras that will justify the purchase for those who really appreciated the film (I am sure there must have been a few out there in spite of their better judgement). They do not, however, justify the higher price point, which has been added to films with far fewer selling points (Universal Solider: The Return, anyone?). $39.95 for a film, regardless of what is in the package, is just way too much. This is the same price as I used to pay to get decent music videos imported on VCR, and those videos had a lot more to offer me than this film, in spite of their limitations.

    This is mainly advice for Columbia: if you are going to bring out a line of discs at a price point where most people will start to scratch their heads and wonder if it makes economic sense to them, you should not throw any old title into that line. Were the Deluxe Collector's Edition lines full of such films as Robocop, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, or A Clockwork Orange, then I would happy pay the higher price for titles in this line. However, I would not keep most of the titles given this label and priced higher if I were being paid to do it. Thumbs down, Columbia, big time.

Menu

    The menu is basically themed around the movie. The main menu is presented with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound and some rather tiresome animation. All of the menus appear to be 16x9 enhanced, and they are reasonably pleasant to look at when they stay still. They do, however, require a little bit of getting used to with the navigation. Some thought needs to go into making these menus more intuitive, methinks. The scene selection menu is a real stinker, as there is almost no way of knowing where the cursor actually is without getting up and standing about six inches away from the screen, even on a larger set (unless you are using a rear-projection screen, which is kind of a waste with this film). The same can be said of the commentary menu, and several other menus with similar cosmetic trimmings that I cannot quite find words to describe.

Deleted Scenes

    A collection of 14 scenes that were cut from the film for one reason or another. They are all presented at an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. For some reason or another, all of them still have the time slates included. They are also riddled with film artefacts of the sort you can expect to find when they haven't been cleaned up for inclusion by the editor. They range from pleasant to boring, with the best ones listed first (thankfully). Some of the deleted scenes are more interesting than the film itself.

Theatrical Trailer

    This was shown once on the local television networks before the film was suddenly (we're talking about two weeks later here) withdrawn from most of the cinemas and never heard from again. It is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. It is a display of all the most exciting points of the film in a compact, two-minute exhibition. I admit, it does succeed where so many fail, in that it gets my interest in the film going.

Cast & Crew Biographies

    These are euphemistically referred to as Talent Profiles in the menu, which is something of a contradiction in terms with this film. The formatting makes them somewhat difficult to read, especially with the font changes and the compact, squashed type. Readability was obviously a smaller factor in the design as compared to cosmetic trendiness.

Music Videos

    These are music videos for songs that appear in this film - No Doubt's New, Philip Steir and Steppenwolf's Marget Carpet Ride, and LEN's Steal My Sunshine. If you're one of those people whom media corporations like Sony and Columbia seem to believe are the whole and sum parts of the 17-25 age group, you'll enjoy these music videos. Otherwise, these extras are just another thing thrown at us to try and make us believe the higher price is justified. Being that I am a real musician (ie I can play a lot more than just syncopated techno rubbish), I have to give all three of these videos a resounding thumbs down. The only saving grace of the first of these videos is that the visuals are vaguely interesting. The others don't even have that much going for them.

Commentary - Doug Liman (Director/Cinematographer) and Stephen Mirrione (Editor)

    When you discount accent and pitch, voices can be described in one of two ways. There's the kind that are designed for speaking to an audience, and while some of those belonging to this group need some training to master it, they do it well. Doug Liman and particularly Stephen Mirrione have the other kind of voice. Doug Liman sounds vaguely normal at some points, but he still is afflicted with the malady of speaking in a somewhat falsetto pitch, and almost always through his nose. Stephen Mirrione honestly sounds like he has suffered a major hormonal deficiency that has kept his voice box from growing to man-size. Okay, having cleared up how the voices sound, I'll deal with how interesting what they have to say is: maybe it's just my lack of interest in the film, but this commentary track is awfully dull. Perplexingly, they refer to real names for the people who supervised the music in this film, as well as the mysterious and already mentioned BT. I would have thought they would want to remain anonymous, given how utterly ordinary their product is. Doug Liman's rabbitting about his techniques to make the audience feel that the film lasts longer than the 98 minutes they spend watching it is utterly hilarious for all the wrong reasons. Columbia, this is a film that is younger than one of my baby cousins who only just had her first birthday, with a shelf life that is less than that of your average lump of camel dung. All I can say to the use of it as a DCE title is "yeah right".

R4 vs R1

    Astoundingly, there doesn't appear to be any extras on our version that aren't on the other. This is probably the only thing about this disc that I will commend Columbia on with this title. According to some reports, the Region 1 version lacks a decent sound mix, but this only strengthens that case against sourcing this film from Region 1. If the disc carries a similarly outrageous price tag there, then there really is no reason to import it at all.

Summary

    Go is yet another example of a film's quality being inversely proportional to the amount of hype it receives. It is watchable, but Columbia's attempt to pass it off as a collector's piece is laughable. It's truly a pity that such a wonderful effort was wasted on the DVD version, as the plot soon sinks below the boredom line after the halfway mark.

    The video quality is excellent, although it isn't quite reference quality. Some artefacts do show in places, but they are so minor that they require magnification to spot. Their exact origin in the DVD-making process is very hard to pick.

    The same can be said for the audio quality. The audio quality is sharp and well-focussed (mostly), and the surround presence enhances the movie experience quite well.

    The extras can be summed up in three words: quantity over quality. Because Columbia are using them to justify charging us yet another five bucks more than we should pay, this is patently unacceptable and deserving of a half-point deduction just for the price point.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall
© Dean McIntosh
19th January, 2000
Review Equipment
   
DVD Grundig GDV 100D
Display Panasonic 68cm
Audio Decoder None
Amplification Sony STR-DE535
Speakers Panasonic S-J1500D front speakers, Sharp CP-303A back speakers, Sony SS-CN120 centre speaker, Yamaha B100-115SE subwoofer