Go

The most breathlessly exhilarating cinematic joyride of its kind since Pulp Fiction, Doug Liman's follow-up to the much-loved Swingers is an instant cult classic which could be hailed in many quarters as a generation-defining masterpiece.

The Pulp Fiction comparisons are bound to run and run: the wisecrack-ridden dialogue is strongly reminiscent of Tarantino's, while the film uses an ingenious overlapping three-part structure in order to relate its multiple plot threads. It's only with the second viewing that you come to realise just how skilfully put-together the whole labyrinthine set-up really is.

Go's youthful collection of characters, however, are a good deal more believable and recognisable than any of Quentin's creatures (which might not be saying a whole lot). They are, broadly speaking, a gang of rave-generation lunatics, simultaneously impulsive and down-to-earth, whose paths become inexorably entangled over the course of 24 astonishing hours.

Ronna (Polley) and Claire (Holmes) are a pair of supermarket checkout girls with a slight problem: Ronna is about to be evicted and it's coming up to Christmas, so in order to save her ass, she temporarily resorts to dealing E, as well as the occasional aspirin. Meanwhile, a gang of high-spirited 'wigger' types take off to Vegas for a weekend of extreme wildness: a three-in-a-bed sex scene set in a room which goes up in flames is one of the film's more uneventful passages.

Rounding off this cast of crazies are a sullen, super-arrogant drug dealer (Olyphant), a pair of closet gay actors (Mohr and Wolf), a sleazeball cop (Fichtner), an unforgettably devil-may-care British funseeker (Desmond Askew) and an assortment of distinctly unsavoury low-lifes - every single one of whom turns out to exercise a key influence over the course of events.

If it were a novel, Go would require a few hundred pages to make any narrative sense, so fantastically convoluted is the web it spins. But there's so much more to it than mere cleverness: the dialogue sparkles with acerbic wit from start to finish, the 'action' sequences pack more visceral power than any of Arnie's last ten outings, and the film's atmosphere (edgy, high-speed and exploding with manic energy) is wonderful.

A pure adrenaline rush of fearless bravado, hilarity and scarcely-believable ambition, Go is the best thrill-ride we will be served up for some time to come.

Don't just sit there: Go. As soon as possible.