--- title: "Go Now" year: 1995 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/go-now" fi1m_id: "go-now" imdb_id: "tt0113184" tmdb_id: 49474 wikidata_id: "Q13583389" fi1m_score: 77 critics_reviews: 3 published: "2026-10-07T12:21:21.072924+00:00" updated: "2026-10-07T12:22:03.940020+00:00" region: "UA" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Go Now (1995) Directed by Michael Winterbottom · 1h 21m · Romance, Drama ## Identity Go Now - **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/go-now - **Type:** Film - **Fi1m ID:** go-now - **IMDb ID:** tt0113184 - **TMDB ID:** 49474 - **Wikidata ID:** Q13583389 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113184/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/49474, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q13583389 **Fi1m score: 77** · Critics: 3 of 6 reviews so far *In a sentence:* A Sunday-league plasterer, a bad diagnosis, and mates who keep taking the mickey right up to the ward door > Michael Winterbottom and Jimmy McGovern take a story that usually arrives with violins and tell it with pub jokes and bad plastering instead. Robert Carlyle is exact and unshowy, and the film is honest about illness until its last ten minutes, when it blinks. ## Synopsis Bristol, the mid-1990s. Nick Cameron (Robert Carlyle) is a Scottish plasterer who spends his weekdays skimming walls and his Sundays playing football for a pub side managed by Sammy (Berwick Kaler), alongside his best mate Tony (James Nesbitt), who treats every setback as the set-up for a joke. At a party after a match Nick meets Karen Walker (Juliet Aubrey), who works in a hotel and shares a flat with her friend Paula (Sophie Okonedo). They fall for each other quickly and move in together. Then Nick’s eyes start to play up on the pitch, a hand goes numb, and he drops things he should be able to hold. The doctors say multiple sclerosis. Karen wants to stay; Nick, who has only ever been the one who copes, is not sure he can let her. ## Review There is a kind of film about a young man and a terrible diagnosis, and most of us have learned to flinch when one appears. *Go Now* knows this and spends most of its 81 minutes refusing to be it. Jimmy McGovern and Paul Henry Powell’s script is set among plasterers and Sunday footballers in Bristol, and when Nick Cameron’s body begins to fail him, nobody on screen reaches for a tissue. They reach for the next insult. That is the film’s method, and for an hour and a quarter it works better than we had any right to expect. Robert Carlyle made this just before [*Trainspotting*](https://film.one/film/trainspotting) and [*The Full Monty*](https://film.one/film/the-full-monty), and you can see why those parts followed. Nick is a man whose whole sense of himself is physical: he works with his hands, he plays in the mud on a Sunday, he lifts his girlfriend off her feet when he is pleased with her. Carlyle plays the first signs of the illness as irritation rather than fear. A dropped trowel is the plaster’s fault; blurred vision is a bad night’s sleep. When the fear does arrive it comes out as temper, mostly aimed at the person who least deserves it, and Carlyle never once asks us to like him for it. It is a small, precise performance and the film rests on it. Juliet Aubrey has the thankless part, and she plays it without complaint. Karen is the one who stays, and the script does not give her a great deal to do beyond staying; one or two critics have found her flat beside the rest of the cast, and we see what they mean. What Aubrey does well is listen. In the long middle stretch she is mostly watching Nick decide whether to shut her out, and she makes the watching count. James Nesbitt’s Tony is the other reason to see it. He is the mate who turns up at the hospital with a carrier bag of cans and a new joke about wheelchairs, and Nesbitt lets you see exactly how frightened the joker is. Sophie Okonedo, as Karen’s flatmate Paula, has less screen time than she deserves and uses all of it. Michael Winterbottom shoots the whole thing quickly and close. Daf Hobson’s camera is often handheld and the light is the light of a Bristol afternoon, grey and unflattering, with no attempt to make a bedsit or a hospital corridor look like anything else. Hayden Pearce’s design gives Nick and Karen a flat with half-finished walls, which is a plasterer’s joke and also a fair picture of the relationship. Rachael Fleming dresses everyone in the tracksuits and work jeans they would own, and Trevor Waite cuts the football scenes like a Saturday-evening highlights package, fast and loud and over before anyone has time to be sad about them. Alastair Gavin’s music stays out of the way for most of the running time, which is the right call for this material. The moment that got at us was a plain one. Nick is up a ladder on a job, doing the thing he has done for years, and his hand will not do what he tells it. The plaster goes on wrong. Nobody says anything; Carlyle simply looks at the wall, and then at his hand, and climbs down. We had been laughing a minute earlier, and we found we had stopped. It is the only scene in the film where the illness is shown rather than talked about, and it does more than all the hospital scenes put together. Then there is the ending, which we will not describe. Having spent 70 minutes being dry and awkward and true, the film decides it would like to be uplifting after all, and it goes about it with a directness that does not sit with what has come before. The reviews so far have mostly forgiven this, and we have forgiven most of it too, but it is a lapse, and it is the thing you will be arguing about on the way to the kettle. Set against Winterbottom’s own early work, this is warmer than *Butterfly Kiss* and plainer than *Jude*, and it shows the quick, unfussy manner that would carry him through the next decade. Set against McGovern’s television writing, with its taste for men who cannot say what is wrong with them, it is entirely of a piece. Watch it with someone who will laugh at the hospital jokes, and do not be surprised if the last ten minutes leave you slightly less sure of the film than the first seventy. *Fi1m score 77, published 7 October 2026.* ## Straight answers **Is Go Now worth watching?** *Go Now* is worth watching for anyone who wants a film about illness told with pub jokes rather than violins, and we scored it 77. Robert Carlyle is exact and unshowy as a Bristol plasterer whose body starts to fail him, and James Nesbitt is the frightened joker at his side. The last ten minutes go soft, and you will argue about them afterwards. **How long is Go Now, and what is it rated?** *Go Now* runs 1h 21m. It is a romance and drama film. **Where can I watch Go Now in Ukraine?** *Go Now* is not on any streaming or rental service in Ukraine at the moment. It is available in 4 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily. **How does Go Now compare to My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown?** *Go Now* is the smaller, plainer film and [*My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown*](https://film.one/film/my-left-foot-the-story-of-christy-brown) the fuller one. Winterbottom shoots a fictional plasterer quickly and close in grey Bristol light; Sheridan tells a true Dublin life with a stiff framing device and an insistent score. Day-Lewis gives the more complete performance, but *Go Now* is the one to pick if sentiment makes you wince. **What should I watch after Go Now?** After *Go Now*, try [*My Left Foot*](https://film.one/film/my-left-foot-the-story-of-christy-brown) (1989, Fi1m 85): Daniel Day-Lewis as Christy Brown; funnier and angrier than its reputation suggests. Then [*Amour*](https://film.one/film/amour) (2012, Fi1m 88): Haneke on a long marriage and a failing body, patient, exact and unsentimental. ### Reviews we read (3) - **Los Angeles Times**, JACK MATHEWS (85/100, inferred): Mathews praises the film for avoiding melodramatic disease-of-the-week conventions and keeping its focus on the couple’s relationship. He singles out Robert Carlyle and Juliet Aubrey for making the characters sympathetic and emotionally engaging. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-may-27-ca-53634-story.html) - **Variety**, Derek Elley (80/100, inferred): Elley gives the film a warm, positive verdict, praising its energy and refusal to become maudlin. He singles out the lively ensemble and dry humor, while noting Juliet Aubrey feels flat beside the cast. [Read](https://variety.com/1995/film/reviews/go-now-1200442394/) - **The New York Times**, Janet Maslin (75/100, inferred): Maslin finds the film quietly serious and moving, despite its strained inspirational ending. She particularly praises Robert Carlyle’s precise, affecting portrayal of fear and frustration. [Read](https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/film/050198gonow-film-review.html) ## Details - **Director:** Michael Winterbottom - **Director:** Michael Winterbottom - **Writer:** Paul Henry Powell, Jimmy McGovern - **Cinematography:** Daf Hobson - **Editor:** Trevor Waite - **Music:** Alastair Gavin - **Production design:** Hayden Pearce, Hayden Pearce - **Costume design:** Rachael Fleming - **Producer:** Andrew Eaton, Roxy Spencer - **Cast:** Robert Carlyle as Nick Cameron; Juliet Aubrey as Karen Walker; Sophie Okonedo as Paula; James Nesbitt as Tony; Berwick Kaler as Sammy; Barbara Rafferty as Madge Cameron; Tony Curran as Chris Cameron; Erin McMahon as Julie Cameron - **Runtime:** 1h 21m - **First release (the UK):** 16 September 1995 - **Genres:** Romance, Drama ## Where to watch in Ukraine Not streaming, renting or buying in Ukraine at the last check. Also available in: AU, CA, NZ, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Raining Stones* (1993): Ken Loach’s skint northern comedy, with the same gift for jokes told through clenched teeth - *My Left Foot* (1989), Fi1m 85: Daniel Day-Lewis as Christy Brown; funnier and angrier than its reputation suggests — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/my-left-foot-the-story-of-christy-brown.md) - *Wonderland* (1999): Winterbottom’s London weekend, shot on the hoof, with the same restless, close camera - *The Sea Inside* (2004): Javier Bardem bedridden and quick-witted in a film that refuses to weep for him - *Amour* (2012), Fi1m 88: Haneke on a long marriage and a failing body, patient, exact and unsentimental — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/amour.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/go-now