So, Go's three interconnected tales follow a diverse group of Los Angeles twentysomethings as their lives bang up against one another in a scenario that's the 90s in a nutshell, from the Xer point of view: sex and danger that's both exciting and terrifying (the clever script uses the word "go" both in the imperative, let's-get-out-of-here sense and also in the imperative, orgasmic sense, as a synonym for "come"). And is if to demonstrate typical Xer cynicism, it all happens while holly jolly Christmas passes by practically unnoticed in the background.

Ronna (Sarah Polley: Last Night, The Sweet Hereafter), barely scraping by as a supermarket checker and about to be evicted from her apartment, agrees to take a weekend shift for Simon (Desmond Askew) for the extra dough. Simon improves his cash flow with a sideline of drug dealing, and his absence from the supermarket allows Ronna to step momentarily into this lucrative biz when Adam (Scott Wolf) and Zack (Jay Mohr: Paulie), TV actors on a cop show, come looking to buy. Ronna runs afoul of Simon's dealer, Todd (Timothy Olyphant: Scream 2), and adventures in dealing come to a nasty close in what seems to be too impossibly quick a manner.

Ah, but then writer John August and director Doug Liman get delightfully clever. We rewind -- like we're watching a video -- back to the beginning, and now we follow Simon's adventures as he heads to Vegas for a weekend of rowdy hedonism with pals Tiny (Breckin Meyer: 54) and Marcus (Taye Diggs). Marcus's tales of the joys of tantric sex intrigue Simon, and, determined to get ritually laid, he crashes a wedding with the intent of bagging a bridesmaid or two. Meanwhile, Marcus's outing to a strip club goes disastrously bad -- guns and strippers really don't mix.

And then -- hello -- we rewind again to get Adam and Zack's story. They appear at first to be the most successful -- professionally and personally -- of everyone we've met. But their constant bitching about their failed romantic relationships and the fact that they're doing some work, under duress, for narc cop Burke (William Fichtner: Armageddon, Contact) indicates they are just as messed up as the rest of Go's characters.

August and Liman don't present any of their characters in an especially flattering light -- an older guy reproaches Marcus for his "whole screwed-up generation," and nobody here would disagree with that assessment. These self-disparaging Xers know precisely the kind of lost children they are, and precisely how to escape a world that not only does not speak to them but has already written them off: When Zack and Adam flee a decidedly freaky, cult-of-Amway encounter, Zack says with a shudder, "I need to bathe in sin."

So while Ronna and Zack and Simon and the rest may not be the most upstanding of citizens, their premature world-weariness and morose realism do, I'm afraid, make them all too recognizable. At least to other Xers.