Brick

This indie film about a teenager who lost the girl he loves to her  tragic death reminds us of the best film noirs of the 1940's. Everything  sounds like the film noir genre: the use of low camera angles, the  twisted plot, the stereotyped characters and the broken and beaten down  hero "à la" Humphrey Bogart.

But what struck you the most is Joseph-Gordon Levitt's presence as the  protagonist: Brendan. His nuanced performance holds the whole movie  together. Jo-Go has this weird "nerdy" look of an improvised private  receiving multiple beatings and investing on the death of his former  lover: Emily or should I say the femme fatale of the film... She is the  kind of woman/girl a man can't lost all his marks.

Brendan will try to understand and elucidate what happened to Emily and  what led her to death. He'll have to frequent dark characters like Tug  and The Pin. Did I mentioned this? All this film noir settings is  situated in the lives of High School teens.

It's without a doubt an interesting approach to the High School world  and to the film noir genre. But somehow, it lacks of reality in its  coherence. It's probably over serious in its use of the noir genre. It  makes the references look like if the genre is a farce. However, Rian  Johnson the writer/director of Brick wasn't afraid to insert some  really funny humoristic moments. His direction is interesting and it  keeps the true spirit of the Film Noir codes (see The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep). I don't know exactly why but this treatment reminded me of a David Lynch film of the 1980's and 1990's.

I'd like to see Johnson's other success Brothers Bloom which I heard some praises about lately. But now I'd like to know what you all think of Brick?

Review:  Film noir is one of the hardest genre's to get right and it takes all the pieces to fit in order for it to be successful.  However, when it does it works quite well.

Film noir is generally your movie that has a strong narrative feel to it and a strong central lead character that wants to do good but is ultimately flawed.  These types of movies were very popular in the 1940's and 1950's.  The difference between now and then though is not merely in styles of clothing of different types of cars but in our actual culture in our every day lives.  How we talk and interact with each other and with the different sexes has changed immeasurably over the last 50 years.

However, the filmmaker here (Rian Johnson) has decided to take the completely authentic style from the '40's and '50's (dialogue and all) and plop it right into a modern day California high school.  This is a bold move by the director and once you can accept that these are high school kids speaking this way and move it, the movie becomes weirdly brilliant.  Characters speak to each other with terms like "I have daggers in my eyes, I need to sleep," or "it's curtains for me."  High schoolers don't talk like this but you just have to accept it and move on because once you do the film is very engrossing and enjoyable.

Choosing the setting and characters as he does for this type of movie is what makes it so original.  The movie starts with us seeing a dead girl under a bridge and then flashing back to two days before and seeing how it got to that point and what happened afterwards.  Our protagonist is Brenden (Gordon-Leavitt) and he is the one who sets off to help this girl who eventually gets murdered, and then find out why she was murdered.  The story is full of twists and turns and it is the characters and their buying into the directors style that makes it engrossing.  Eventually you do believe that high schoolers could be involved in this heavy of stuff and that if they were they would talk like this.  Once you do, you're taken to a world, an alternate world if you will, where all this is possible and even normal. 

All the actors really own their roles.  Each person in this movie does not exist because the script tells them to and does not act because the director tells them how.  Rather, these people all have a singular purpose for themselves that they are all out for and they do not reach their end game until that goal is achieved.  It is this constant interplay that propels the story.  Even though some characters are working together they all have their own motives and choose the action that will satisfy those the quickest.  There are a few twists and turns in this movie and it all makes for great entertainment.  All in all I would say it's worth your time.

A different type of gimmick.
When a secret crush turns up dead and the murderer is anyone’s guess, teenage loner Brendan Fry (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is forced to navigate his school’s social network through intense interactions with thespians, band geeks and druggies (including a grown-up Lukas Haas).

The film has all the elements of a noir: dark atmosphere, creepy score, and haunting visuals, but the twist here is that its set in a 21st century high school.

In my opinion this film has one of the best writing-directing debuts of all time from Rian Johnson. The screenplay is just filled with so much humor, bleakness, and so much mystery, that it almost all feels to realistic. You watch those old noir films and you will realize that nobody else really talks like they do, and in this film, you get the sense of how real people talk in this, especially with all their hipster dialogue. Some of the parts in this film are actually tongue-in-cheek, and I liked that separation from old noirs mostly. The direction from Johnson is very inspired, because there are so many parts where this film could have just did the cliche route of being too corny, and obvious, but instead delves more into its plot and how much its characters become even more rich.

The one problem I had with this film was the handling of the ending, and its message. The end could have been set up so well, and so intriguing but it only goes for the slow ending and a not very effective one to say the least.

Brick has one of the best protagonists in a film played by the great Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The reason why this person is so great is because we step into the movie having no idea who he is other than just your typical loner at school, but as the film progresses we get to see him as a person more and more, who will stop at nothing to find the truth. Gordon-Levitt is what you would call your anti-hero, because he doesn’t strive to be great, he just is crazy and your everyday person, and that’s what makes him great. I also liked Lukas Haas as “The Pin” who plays a wonderful parody on the old mobster leaders, from those films, and probably gives one of the best supporting performances.

Consensus: Brick is short of an effective ending, and has the look, touch, and feel of a noir, but with a twist, great writing and direction, and a superbly acted cast.

9.5/10=Full Pricee!!

life has its own ways of working out<br />
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