Brick

A life in film — if you really commit yourself to it — can leave you desperately depressed about the future. The templates are so mature that they are inescapable: without a template somewhere in the field of the thing you simply cannot "read" it, register it.

So you have only a few choices if you are a young filmmaker entering this world. You can buy into the system and play the game as the rivers flow. You can become a stylist in some way.

Or you can play with the templates and forms, usually in a self-referential way. When I see this last as the choice a young filmmaker makes, I rejoice. And it is sheer pleasure when it is done well.

This is. And its existence will make you optimistic, probably just knowing it is there.

Here's what it is: a hardboiled detective story transplanted not into high school (as it appears) but into the abstractions of high school that movies have invented. These two genres each have their own set of abstractions that flatten the world. This fellow has overlapped them. He's suppressed all irony — what is usually called irony but is actually selfawareness.

For this to work, all the characters have to be locked in their own world(s) and never glimpse anything outside the flatland. Its expertly done here, just gloriously. The editing is banal (which is a real problem) but the blocking is every bit as inspired as the placement of the thing in terms of the ordinary world of movies.

One example: our hero has been stereotypically beaten and is in a car trunk on his way to meet the local drug kingpin, who is another teen operating out of his Mom's basement. There's a game of light and darkness in this sequence: being blacked out with fists, darkness in the trunk and surreptitiously peering out. Once we are in the house down the cellar stairs there is a short hallway between the bottom of the stairs and a small basement room, the hub. This room is cheap fake wood panelling and low ceiling. Cheap lamps. But before we get there, we get a flash of light when the door opens and we see the 10 foot hallway is jammed with teen drug soldiers lined against the two walls. Its brilliant.

Kids. They own everything. They control not the future but the way we shape what we have now. When I see stuff like this, I think we might be lucky because if it.

2005 was a bad year for movies. This should be on your short list of best of 2005.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

"Brick" is completely lacking in any sort of believability or even plausibility, and even if you pretend that it takes place in an alternate universe where everybody speaks 'stylized' as opposed to English, the dialogue sounds silly and ridiculous spoken by typical high school kids. I can buy this sort of stylized dialogue if spoken by gangsters and private detectives, but high school kids? Even in a fantasy universe the characters have to be believable but in this case the characters, their motives, their lives (lifestyles, more like), their way of speaking, and their mannerisms completely lack believability or plausibility and while I SHOULD be invested in the outcome of the film's events I simply cannot be because I'm reminded over and over again that these characters aren't plausible.

"Brick" is original in the sense that there are no other stylized neo-noir films set in high school, but it lacks originality in all other areas. Rian Johnson's (who is clearly, based on this film, a very talented director) direction is almost too inspired by classic noir for the film to work in its own right. It's certainly pretty to look at, and quite well-paced, but it's far too concerned with being an homage to bother with feeling genuine. The same could be said of the plot, characters, and dialogue, which are all so 'inspired' by Raymond Chandler and countless other sources that they seem far more interested in packing in homage after allusion after homage after allusion than telling a story. The story itself is mildly interesting, and some of the plot twists and turns got an 'ooh' out of me, but the whole thing feels completely phony and soulless. The sort of thing that would have been fun as a 10-minute short for film class, but is incredibly frustrating as a feature.

The acting is good from everybody involved, and Rian Johnson's shot composition is excellent, as well as the cinematography by Steve Yedlin and the score by Nathan Johnson. The script is outrageously silly and over-the-top, but at least the film is nice to look at.

A noir story in a high school setting is a reasonable idea, and this film could have been quite good, but instead of working in all the staples of a noir Johnson instead goes all out and makes something so frustratingly derivative and intensely stylized that it doesn't for a second feel plausible. No, I'm not looking for realism here, just some form of plausibility and believability. Do you question the world of "Star Wars"? Do you question the persistently stylized dialogue in classic noir films? No, of course you don't, because they feel genuine. Above everything else, "Brick" is completely phony. Not a second feels real, and by the tenth time Joseph Gordon-Levitt attempted a Marlowe routine I was already shaking my head in disbelief at the waste of talent this film was. It's so phony and so gimmicky that it becomes genuinely hard to sit through.

4/10

Saw this at the Mill Valley Film Festival. It's essentially a film noir set in present-day San Clemente High School, reminiscent of "The Big Sleep," but with drug-dealing added to the mix of double-crossing. The characters may be teenagers, but the dialog channels Chandler and Hammett, and my only real complaint with the film is that Joseph Gordon-Leavitt (in an otherwise wonderful performance) sometimes mumbles; this is dialog you don't want to miss. Lukas Haas is wonderfully eccentric in what is essentially the Sidney Greenstreet role, Noah Fleiss as the dumb thug, and Nora Zehetner even LOOKs like Mary Astor. As with all the great American noir films, there are many sardonic laughs inserted into the dark story.

An instant classic. At once, it demands respect for its efforts. Creating an original film amidst the money-press-like formulaic cookie-cutters is reminiscent an act of rebellion against "the man", and this film has done a beautiful job of sticking it to 'em.

This is just an example of how a movie should be made, and I don't say things like that lightly.

Hell, you know it's going to be interesting when Neilson can only compare and contrast it with things like Memento and Donnie Darko on their little questionnaire. Rock on for intelligent life out there, keep it coming! I for one can't wait till it's released so I can watch for the things I know I missed! -Cognac

While a touch (maybe 5-10 minutes) overlong, its clever dialogue requires absolute attention and shows how well versed in the language of noir the screenwriter is. (Terms like "yegs" and "sap" are rarely used these days but offer a direct and crtitical link to Hammett and Chandler).

It's also quite humorous, mixing David Lynch, "River's Edge", "Heathers", and any high-noir reference you care to make quite freely. And Lukas Haas' turn as an oddball kingpin is reminiscent of William Hurt's spin on the same in "A History of Violence" in that they are both highly stylized.

However, because the dialogue is so utterly complicated, discerning all the plot elements and making eventual sense of the film would probably have to be done over a period of time. The film lends itself to multiple viewings, and some people might not like that.