This is a European release. English spoken with Dutch subtitles (that you cannot switch off). 

This is a region 0 release that will play on all DVD-players worldwide.

Review 1:

Set in the crime and drug infested slums of Washington D.C just blocks away from the center of power of the United States Government, the Capital and the White House. "Short Fuse" or "Good to Go" takes place in the mid-1980's at the beginning of the then much heralded "War on Drugs". The war initiated by the Reagan/Bush Administration that's still with us after twenty years and still going strong as well as being frustrating,for the local police and Federal DEA and FBI fighting it, as ever.

A gang of homeboys, high on crack and angel dust, go on a wild rampage one Friday evening. The destruction ends with the vicious and deadly rape and murder of a nurse going home from her job on the night-shift at the local hospital. Washington Tribune reporter S.D Bass, Art Garfunkel,needing a story for his papers morning edition calls D.C Police homicide Chief Harrigan, Harris Yulin,for some breaking crime news. Harrigan gives Bass the inside scoop about the nurse's rape and murder. Bass is also told that the rape/murder happened at a local music and dance club called the Go-Go.

Making all the headlines the next day the Go-Go manager Max, Robert DoQui, is outraged at Bass for reporting that the rape/murder happened at his nightclub when it actually happened in an empty alley blocks away. Bass who took Harrigan's story about the murdered nurse at face value begins to realize that he's using him to implicate the night club and those who work and go there.This on Harrington's part is to give the public the impression that those living in the almost all-black US capital city of Washngton D.C are for the most part not law abiding but mostly a bunch of drug addicts and criminals. Later Bass' suspicions are confirmed when a couple of white teenagers high on pot drive their car into a congested inner city intersection killing themselves and their both reported to be, by Harrigan's and the D.C police official's, black.

Bass is later at the police station as an impartial observer where Harrigan is interrogating young Beats Daughtry, Reginald Daughtry,about the whereabouts of his big brother Tony Daughtry's,Richard Brooks, known on the street as "Chemist". Harrington wants to know what role Tony had in the nurse's murder which in fact he had nothing to do with. Befriending the young and scared Beats Harrington tells him and later his mother, Hattie Winston, that if Tony turns himself over to him he'll see to it that no harm comes to him and he won't end up on a cold slab at the city morgue.

Tony not wanting to turn himself in is later caught up in a shoot-out with the same gang of homeboys, who raped and murdered the nurse, with the police. When the dust clears five of the "gansters" and two D.C policemen are killed. Hungry and on the run for days with nowhere to go or hide Tony end up in his mothers apartment. Tony feels that he'll be killed by the vengeful police and Chief Harrigan for the deaths of their two comrades, which he had nothing to do with. Taking up reporter Bass' offer to give himself up to him Tony is in for a big and deadly surprise later in the movie. Bass with Chief Harrigan coming along to peacefully take Tony into custody has Harrigan, instead of arresting Tony, shooting him dead in front of his shocked and terrified mother and younger brother as well as Bass. Feeling that he let Tony and his family down and is responsible for the innocent mans murder Bass is now more determined then ever to go public with what happened.

The city is now about to explode, since the newspaper Bass works for refuses to print his story, over Harrigan's killing of Tony, thats been reported as a justifiable act of self-defense which nobody in D.C proper for a minute believes. It's now up to Bass to get the truth about Tony's death out to the public before Harrigan has the same thing happen to him that happened to Tony before he can tell it!

The film "Short Fuse", slow moving at first, really picks up in the last fifteen minutes or so as Bass is on the run from the murderous Harrigan who's trying to prevent him from telling the truth, about his cold-blooded murder of Tony. At the same time Brass trying to prevent a major race-riot from erupting in the streets of D.C, over Tony's death, fights and claws his way to the stage at a coast-to-coast televised Go-Go music concert as he leaves Harrigan who's chasing him behind stuck in the crowd. Bass making it to the stage ends up telling the millions of viewers the truth about Tony's death and Harrigan's role in it. Thus both vindicating himself as well as seeing to it that justice is done to the wild cheers of thousands of Go-Go music fans at the concert.

Review 2:

For many years I was aware that there was an old ‘80s movie released on VHS called SHORT FUSE starring Art Garfunkel. Because of that tough sounding title I figured it was some kind of WALKING TALL or DEATH WISH type shit where Art Garfunkel had a short fuse and some motherfucker made the mistake of lighting it. And then Art Garfunkel went off faster than expected on account of his fuse’s shortness.

Then Mr. Subtlety told me I should check out this movie called GOOD TO GO “a deliberate attempt to make a Go-Go version of THE HARDER THEY COME, with a bunch of local artists playing themselves,” which he noted was called SHORT FUSE on video and had Garfunkel in it. He knew I was into funk, and go-go is a related subgenre I could theoretically be into.

I was intrigued, but then kinda forgot about it until I was record shopping and bought the GOOD TO GO soundtrack because it was cheap and had Trouble Funk and Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers on it. And then I saw Art Garfunkel on the back and could tell from the picture that this was a guy with a really short fuse.

I don’t know much about go-go, but here’s what I can tell you. It’s a specific style of funk developed in the DC, apparently starting in the late ‘60s, but the form of it I know is very ‘80s. It’s kinda stripped down, heavy on bongos, cowbell and other percussion, and based around chants and call and response. “Da Butt” by EU (composed specifically for Spike Lee’s SCHOOL DAZE) is the most widely known go-go song I’m aware of. (Wikipedia says that DJ Kool’s “Let Me Clear My Throat” is “go-go’s last certifiable hit single,” but I honestly can’t tell how it’s not just hip hop. The go-go songs I know don’t have rapping over popular hip hop samples, they have guys singing like Cameo and chanting over a band. So maybe someone could explain that to me.)

There was a time when many were convinced DC’s locally beloved go-go scene was going to blow up nationally like hip hop and breakdancing had, but instead it stayed mostly regional. GOOD TO GO / SHORT FUSE is a strange relic of that belief that this was the next big thing. I don’t know if it’s trying to be the WILD STYLE, the BEAT STREET, the BREAKIN’ or the LAMBADA of this scene. Maybe the GLEAMING THE CUBE, because it tries to use the scene as background for a crime story. Unfortunately neither the go-go part or the crime part feel like a fully formed movie, and then they’re just sorta haphazardly smooshed together.

What’s cool about it is seeing these bands performing in medium sized clubs. It really shows the infectiousness of the music, which is lucky because there’s a surprising amount of performance footage before there’s any indication of what the story is or who the characters are. The first scene is about a young guy with bongos named Little Beats (Reginald Daughtry) being pushed up against a wall and robbed by his adult older brother (Richard Brooks, TEEN WOLF, THE HIDDEN, SHOCKER, THE SUBSTITUTE, THE CROW: CITY OF ANGELS), whose denim vest painted with “CHEMIST” because he was once a promising chemistry student but now just gets high and stealing. Little Beats ends up playing with a band called Redd and the Brothers, while Chemist hangs out with a mob of rampaging junkies led by Fab 5 Freddy as “Mr. Ain’t.”

Let’s discuss “Fab 5 Freddy” Brathwaite, icon of hip hop and New York City culture. I knew him, of course, as the host of Yo! MTV Raps, the original weekend version. He seemed like this cool hipster everybody knew, but it wasn’t until I was a little older that I saw WILD STYLE and learned his background. He was one of the NYC graffiti artists who broke through to the downtown gallery scene. He was friends with Jean-Michel Basquiat, and appeared in DOWNTOWN 81 with him. He hung out with Andy Warhol and young Madonna. He was in the video for (and namedropped in) Blondie’s “Rapture.” He co-starred in/co-produced WILD STYLE and composed the classic (and sampled by Nas) soundtrack. Another one of his songs, “Change the Beat,” has provided one of the most used samples in hip hop history: Freddy saying “fresh” through a vocoder, first scratched by Grand Mixer DXT on Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” and according to Whosampled.com used on over 750 songs since.

In ’88 he became the first host of Yo! and he also started directing music videos. Some of his classics include “My Philosophy” by Boogie Down Productions, “Talkin’ All That Jazz” by Stetsasonic, “Strictly Business” by EPMD, “Ladies First” by Queen Latifah featuring Monie Love, “What’s My Name?” by Snoop Doggy Dogg and “One Love” by Nas.

But skip back to ’86. This was the year he had a cameo in SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT as a guy telling Nola Darling “Look baby, let’s go to my house right now, let’s do the wild thing, I mean let’s get loose!” But it’s so weird to see him playing a scary criminal. That was a normal thing for Ice-T, Ice Cube, Snoop, Method Man, etc. to do, but Fab 5 always had such a different vibe as the guy who impossibly cool in a way that is before your time and yet perpetually not out of style. A guy who can wear flashy clothes and use slang you never heard before and make you feel like only he’s allowed to use it. A guy who could be friends with a rap crew and a gallery owner and a punk band and if you ever saw him not wearing a hat and sunglasses you would worry about him.

So I know there’s such a thing as acting but to me this guy is such an icon I have a hard time accepting him as a giggling psycho leading a mob of scary dudes through dark alleys, smoking PCP joints, snatching a guy’s chain, randomly knocking over innocent Hare Krishnas, pulling a guy out of his car and stealing it for a drive-by. Unfortunately Mr. Ain’t and friends gang rape and kill a nurse on her way home from a night shift, in an alley near a go-go club just called The Go-Go.

Garfunkel plays S.D. Blass, a newspaper reporter who hears about the crime from a police department connection Detective Harrigan (Harris Yulin, CUTTHROAT ISLAND) and writes an article about it with the inaccurate headline “Nurse Murdered at Go-Go” and subhead “Music and Drugs Blamed For Violence.”

This is big trouble for Max (Robert Doqui, UP TIGHT!, MY SCIENCE PROJECT, ROBOCOP, MIRACLE MILE) of Maxx Saxx Entertainment. He manages the top go-go bands and has been trying to convince bigshot L.A. record producer Gil Colton (Michael White, BEST SELLER) to give them record contracts and take the scene national. Alot of the performance footage is when Max brings Colton to watch the bands, and he likes what he sees, but worries about the Music and Drugs Blamed For Violence.

Although Chemist did not kill the nurse, Detective Harrigan blames him for it and arrests Little Beats to try to get information about him. Eventually Blass figures out that his boy Harrigan is a racist liar, feels bad about all the hell he brought down on this music scene and knows he has to expose the truth. So he talks with Little Beats and his mom (Hattie Winston, The Electric Company, Rugrats, TRUE CRIME) to try to be a good white ally. None of this is very developed at all. The movie ends with a TV reporter covering the exoneration of Chemist and concluding, “For tonight at least, S.D. Blass is a hero in the Black community.”

The soundtrack features five songs by Trouble Funk (including the title song and its reprise), one by Hot Cold Sweat, one by E.U., one by Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers, one by Redd & the Boys. There’s also some Jamaican dance hall/reggae stuff on there, like the theme song for Mr. Aint’s “Wrecking Crew” gang is by Sly & Robbie. The album was released by 4th & B’way. It was produced by Maxx Kidd, also associate producer of the movie, and presumably the basis for the Max character. He had a record label called T.T.E.D., which stood for “Tolerance, Trust, Eternal dedication, and Determination” – nicer than Maxx Saxx Entertainment, but less catchy. Among other things, he was a producer and manager for Trouble Funk and Chuck Brown, and was trying to bring that scene to national or worldwide prominence through this movie and soundtrack. Maybe if the movie was more fun it would’ve worked – I don’t know.

GOOD TO GO is written and directed by Blaine Novak, who otherwise has just directed a few music videos, but he co-wrote Peter Bogdanovich’s THEY ALL LAUGHED (1981), plus STRANGER’S KISS (1983) and later BLUE CHAMPAGNE (1992) starring Diane Ladd. And he appeared in UP THE CREEK (1984) as an actor.