BRICK
Every now and then a new neo-noir film comes along and tries to tap into the hipster movie fan by wanting to be too smart for its own good. Some try to pay homage rather than actually make film noir, while a good portion of the time neo-noir is more about sex and murder than anything else and up totally falling flat. Jade, anyone? That’s not the case with Brick. Here we have a film that embraces everything that is great about the originals without being a rip-off or playing it for irony.
It would have been easy to make this teen noir too cute for its own good. In someone else’s hand it may have been just that, but director Rian Johnson gives it all the dirt and grit that it deserves. Really, is there a better place to stage such a movie than a modern suburban high school, with its social hierarchy, relationships, cliques and secrets that travel through the grave vine? All you have to do is scratch the surface and all sorts of stories come to light. That’s basically what film noir is all about, the seedy world that exists within our own.
After getting a mysterious phone call from a lost love, Emily (Lost’s Emilie de Ravin), Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) tracks his way through an underground world of hoods, vamps, drugs and secret symbols to unravel the mystery of her disappearance. The trail leads through some of the most clever and refreshing characters and plays on character that has been on film in a long time.
Take for example The Pin (Lukas Haas), he’s a 26 year old crime lord who does his business out of his parents wood paneled basement. Haas and Johnson have the audacity to try and sell us on the idea that he conducts meetings over the dining room table while his mother serves orange juice and cookies and for some reason we totally buy it. The Pin’s main muscle, Tugger (Noah Fleiss) is probably the most fascinating character in this story. Tug stomps around with his arms slightly bowed like a human bulldog just looking for a face to punch. Unfortunately, for Brendan his persistence in his quest means that the majority of those punches are aimed at him.
Johnson’s camera is able to really capture the gritty feeling this film needs to work. Don’t be fooled, it isn’t just because this film was so low budget, there is real style here that lends itself not only to the story but to an overall bleak tone. Add this to the perfectly stylized dialogue and you have the makings of what will be a true cult favorite for years and years to come.
The real reason this film works is that it doesn’t try to reinvent the film noir, it just takes those basic character archetypes and puts them in a modern setting. More importantly, it does so without winking at the camera. Sure it meanders a bit and is a little convoluted, but if you can completely explain The Big Sleep, I’ll give you a dollar.
The Grade
- Story: A+
- Acting: A
- Visuals: A
- Originality: A
- Enjoyability: A+
- Overall: A+
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