A Ponta de um Crime

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 a film noir murder mystery featuring contemporary high school students who talk and behave like 1940's-style gangsters.

I hastily bought a ticket to 'Brick' at the Sundance Film Festival, knowing nothing about it but what was written in the Sundance catalog. I almost didn't go to the 9:15am screening but I am so glad I did. 'Brick' was by far the best of the eight films I'd seen up until then. It's one of those rare movies that keeps me grinning throughout, delighted by every turn of the grim plot.

The slang is thick but contextual. Watch closely for little camera tricks like a clock that reads 5:45 until it comes into focus and suddenly reads 8:30.

This is an EXCELLENT and delightfully surprising movie. Its style is refreshing, its dialoque fascinating, the performances powerful, and the story is both energetic and fun. I just caught this movie at the sundance film festival and can't help hoping that A LOT more people get to see it. The amazing attention to detail by Rian Johnson (the writer/director) and the incredible performances by Haas, Zehetner, and especially Joseph Gordon-Levitt marks this very commendable film. I remember sitting in the theater before the film started, completely disappointed by the last two films I had seen the night before. I truly wasn't expecting to be wowed or even awake, but from the very first scene I had to keep "my specs peeled". We just don't get to experience the feel of this movie anymore. I highly recommend it once it's out.

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.

The geography of film noir is usually a neighborhood, a city, a region ... BRICK transposes this geography onto a high school with surprisingly successful results. Watching it brought to mind not only the black & white films of the 40s and 50s, but glimmers of Gus van Sant, David Lynch and River's Edge. What gives BRICK its filmic authenticity (much different from realism) is its language -- the language of Chandler and Hammett, but re-imagined from the lips of contemporary teens.

The effect is staggering. BRICK essentially re-creates a world we thought we knew. Suddenly there are forces at work that we recognize because we knew they were there. But to see them in this noir glow is to give them an exciting new life ... "to see them again for the first time." There are plot twists and surprises aplenty here, although familiar once you realize the inspirations for the film. But familiarity is more than compensated by a superb cast and (not generally noted in these comments) excellent music. Contemporizing the soundtrack keeps us on our toes and makes a significant contribution to the tension of BRICK.

A terrific debut!