Go for Sisters (2013)
Written, directed and edited by John Sayles; director of photography, Kat Westergaard; music by Mason Daring; production design by Mara Spear; costumes by Dana Rebecca Woods; produced by Edward James Olmos, Alejandro Springall and Peter Bobrow; released by Variance Films. Running time: 2 hours 2 minutes. This film is not rated.
WITH: Edward James Olmos (Freddy Suárez), LisaGay Hamilton (Bernice), Yolonda Ross (Fontayne), Harold Perrineau (Wiley), Hector Elizondo (Jorge Menocal) and Isaiah Washington (Vernell).
Bernice (LisaGay Hamilton) and Fontayne (Yolonda Ross), the title characters of John Sayles’s noirish thriller “Go for Sisters,” are not biological siblings but former high school friends who once looked so much alike that people said they could “go for sisters.” In their tense reunion 20 years later, in a seedy Los Angeles outlier, they are on opposite sides of the law.
Now a parole officer, Bernice is assigned to the case of Fontayne, a recovering drug addict newly released from prison. The movie’s opening scene, in which Bernice turns a deaf ear to the pleas of a parole violator, reveals her to be a stern, dispassionate woman who has heard it all and is not easy to fool. She is not so much hardhearted as levelheaded. Taking pity on Fontayne, arrested on minor parole violations, Bernice gives her a second chance, and the friendship — severed when Fontayne stole away Bernice’s boyfriend — is renewed.
Bernice’s estranged son, Rodney (McKinley Belcher III), has been involved in human trafficking across the Mexican border. When he goes missing after the murder of a partner, he becomes a suspect. In return for letting Fontayne off, Bernice enlists her to use her underworld connections to help her find her son.
Their deepening friendship is the heart and soul of “Go for Sisters,” a rare African-American female buddy movie. Ms. Hamilton offers a strong, compassionate portrayal of a careworn woman who plays by the rules and who, despite her severity, exhibits no bitterness or rancor. Ms. Ross’s defiant, sexy Fontayne has pretty much given up on men since having a lesbian affair in prison. Back in her neighborhood, where she works as a short-order cook, she is continually harassed by drug dealers cajoling her to return to her former life.
The creation of layered characters you care about is what Mr. Sayles does best, and “Go for Sisters”includes three. The third, Freddy Suárez (Edward James Olmos), is a disgraced former Los Angeles police detective whom Bernice hires to guide them through Tijuana, Mexico. Mr. Olmos has never looked craggier and more weathered portraying this tough gumshoe, who is partly blind from macular degeneration.
Surveying Tijuana, he growls the movie’s best line: “This isn’t Mexico. This is like a theme park for bad behavior.” As they head south across the border, he coaches Bernice and Fontayne to pose as backup singers for a group playing at a dance.
As long as “Go for Sisters” is focused on its characters, it remains on firm ground. But the flimsy detective story draped over them is underdeveloped and too sluggishly paced to take hold. This self-financed movie, reportedly made for less than a million dollars, badly needs a dash of Hollywood-style action. It turns out that Rodney and his partner had run afoul of Chinese gangsters (barely glimpsed in the film), who are holding him for ransom. But the violence takes place off screen, leaving the movie with too little suspense. As a crime drama, “Go for Sisters” never gains traction.
Like most of Mr. Sayles’s films, “Go for Sisters” has a sociopolitical subtext — in this case, suggested by Fontayne: How is a parolee to avoid breaking the law by associating with drug dealers in an environment where they’re everywhere? She is trapped on a lower rung of the economic ladder.
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