Brick (2005)

A Cool Shorthand

"Brick" is an edgy, roughly cut film, shot on a shoestring. Director Rian Johnson's next film "The Brothers Bloom" is due out early next year & has Nora Zehetner who played Laura & Noah Segum who played Dode. Johnson's screenplay won awards from Central Ohio Film Critics Association and San Francisco Film Critics Circle. Johnson was nominated as a promising director by the Chicago Film Critics Association Awards and by the Sitges-Catalonian International Film Festival. The film won a special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

Joseph Gordon Levitt was excellent in both Stop-Loss & Mysterious Skin (Deluxe Unrated Director's Edition). For those of us who laughed hard at TV's "Third Rock from the Sun," it's wonderful to see his growth as an actor, perhaps poised to become a major star with the right film. As Brendan, he carried his love on his sleeve as he seeks to find out the truth behind his girlfriend's murder. He is unable to turn off his feelings or abandon his search, despite the fact that she broke up with him & apparently did not love him.

Norh Zehetner plays Laura, a wealthy high school student, invited to the right parties. She goes with a football star to enhance her status. She is more than two-faced. As Rian Johnson creates the role, we are always interested to see what face will next emerge.

Lukas Haas plays the Pin, a small-time drug dealer with his own student criminal organization. The guy's looks are so odd with a cane and crazy hairstyle, that Haas' very minimal controlled acting style seems almost at odds with the dialogue. It is a very interesting performance and treatment of the character.

Noah Fleiss turns in an excellent performance as Tugger. He becomes more prominent as the film unravels. His hair-trigger temper explodes repeatedly at a moment's provocation. Fleiss seems to perfect this repeated assault.

Matt O'Leary who was in a film I didn't happen to care for titled Frailty plays the Brain. His character supports Brendan as his backup and support. One of the flaws I found with the script was the lack of integration of the Brain to the plot. I had no idea why he and Brendan were so cooperative. The final scene on the football field made the relationship even more nebulous. I found myself wondering if the film would have been tighter had his character been written out. That said, O'Leary certainly seemed every part the brainy nerd masking a whole other world of experience.

Emile de Ravin played Tess on a favorite TV show of mine, "Roswell." She has also played Claire Littleton on TV's "Lost." I found the plastic blue bracelets that hang limp in the water on the DVD front cover to echo a cheapness to which her character Emily aspires. De Ravin brings complexity to the role's limited screen time.

Noah Segun plays the dimwitted, thick-headed boyfriend of Emily. I found it interesting to watch his screentest in the DVD extras, very minimal acting, but well in character throughout. As Dode, Segun brings a childlike charm to a goth exterior. He looked better in the screentest, which is probably Johnson's point.

Richard Roundtree plays Assistant Vice Principal Trueman in a great cameo. His banter with Brendan is as bouncy as ping-pong match. Meagan Good has nice moments as Kara, a stage chanteuse who enjoys Asian makeup.

In the beginning of the film, I found the fast-paced language incomprehensible much of the time. I kept asking myself, "What'd they say?" Even when I rewound to get what they said, I still had no clue what it meant. As the film unwinds, we acclimate to a hip lingo that is often a cool shorthand that provides the missing pieces of the puzzle. I liked the very practical commentary by Rian Johnson in the DVD extras. For example, he talks about having to re-shoot the final football field scene with Brendan and Laura, but having to shoot their faces from the ground up to mask the changes that had been made to green the football field. I enjoyed the film, appreciating how Johnson gives free reign to his supporting characters to shine. This is worth an evening's entertainment. Enjoy! December 12, 2008

Outstanding!

This movie is a little off the beaten path, but it doesn't fail to deliver. It has more twists and turns than Nascar and the best part is you don't need headphones! This movie offers a fresh insight into the hierarchy of people. Definitely enjoyed! November 27, 2008

A Dark and Intricate High School Mystery

In up and coming director Rian Johnson's film Brick, audiences are treated to a truly unique and memorable mystery film. Inspired by the literary work of the great detective novel writer Dashiell Hammett, who is best known as the creator of Sam Spade and The Thin Man, Rian Johnson set out to create a hip, contemporary noir film. While simultaneously following in the footsteps of great mystery writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Johnson succeeds in revitalizing the detective genre for a new generation, and he does so by making a drastic departure from the traditions of typical film noir. Rather than setting his story in a decaying metropolis full of smoky rooftops and shadowy alleyways, Johnson places the story and its characters in the suburbs of modern day Southern California. He transforms the hard-bitten stereotyped figures of pulp novels into world-weary teenagers and he updates the all-too-familiar dialogue of detective films, turning it into something more improvisational and poetic, almost as though the film's dialogue was part of a jazz song. Though the highly stylized dialogue limits the commercial accessibility of the film, it is arguably what gives the story its refreshing flavor. Using a combination of 1940s slang and modern pop terminologies, Johnson dislocates viewers from reality and relocates them in a "shadow world", where every darkness hides behind it a secret and every soul is haunted by their misdeeds. Yet somehow the film avoids pretension and self-importance, which is truly remarkable in itself.

When Brendan, an anti-social and extremely street savvy high school senior, receives a distressed phone call from his ex-girlfriend, Emily, who cryptically asks him to help her, he doesn't know what to do. They had broken up a few short months earlier when Emily began hanging with the wrong crowd; the rich, the snotty, the over privileged and then the low-level drug dealers and a host of other less than savory peers. Brendan had tried to protect her from their corrupting influence, from their world of drugs, sex, and violence, but his efforts failed and Emily left him for a drug dealer named Dode. Now Brendan sees his chance to help her, to save her from self-destruction if it isn't already too late... but it is. Learning that Emily was meant to meet someone for a late night meeting in a tunnel, Brendan shows up hoping to talk to her. Instead he finds her dead body. After hiding her body, Brendan begins to set into action a plan to find those responsible for Emily's "downfall". Naturally Brendan, being somewhat of a lone wolf, doesn't have direct access to the same cliques that Emily did. He goes to his brilliantly resourceful friend, Brain, who seems to have the dirt on just about everyone in school. With Brain's help, Brendan infiltrates a world of drug dealers, of adolescent femme fatales, of snitches and sneaks, and of conspiracies. Soon the trail leads him to a local urban legend regarding a drug dealer known as The Pin (short for The Kingpin), who lives in his parents' basement. When Brendan finally makes his way into The Pin's circle and meets his "hothead" bodyguard Tug, and his slinky and seductive gal pal Laura, he has no clue of the level of danger and deception that surrounds him. As the intrigue is elevated so too are Brendan's troubles. It doesn't take him long to figure out that "there's not much chance of coming out clean."

It should be pretty obvious that Brick is in no way an attempt to portray high school realistically. Rian Johnson has, in fact, succeeded in making high school even more oppressive and agonizing. Who knew that was even possible?
Another great strength of the film is its use of atmospheric and highly evocative music. The beautifully haunting score was created by Rian Johnson's cousin, Nathan Johnson, who heightens the story's emotional subtext and the dramatic tension in a devastating manner.
The film features a talented young cast including Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Brendan, Lukas Haas as The Pin, Noah Fleiss as Tug, Norah Zehetner as Laura, Matt O'Leary as Brain, Noah Segan as Dode, and Emilie de Ravin as Emily. The cast also features Meagan Good, and in a cameo role, Richard Roundtree of Shaft fame. The entire cast is really spectacular, especially when you consider the difficulty of delivering such strange, stylized dialogue with a sense of sincerity.

Also recommended:
The Maltese Falcon
Rebel Without a Cause
Chinatown
The Outsiders
The Coen Brothers Movie Collection
Romeo + Juliet
11:14 November 25, 2008

if you like noir pick this movie up.

for anyone who likes noir this is a great film for you it blends 1930 noir dialog with modern times highly recommended!!! November 4, 2008

Amazing movie

I have to admit, the first 15-20 minutes of this movie I was wondering whether I was going to be able to get into it. Then, when Brendan is trying to figure out what the A means, I got sucked in. Honestly, I thought it was fantastic and the story itself is great. The dialogue was kind of weird at first, but it really fits the film A+++

And I'd like to address the reviewer who said this is another film where the kids don't appear to have parents and he couldn't believe that high school kids were running a complicated drug operation. This is the way a startling percentage of the population of this country grows up. Alot of parents are too busy working to pay attention to their children and teenagers are not as dumb as most people think. When they're motivated, a highly efficient drug operation is no problem. October 23, 2008

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