Brick
Written and directed by Rian Johnson
Focus
2006
Rating:


High school and film noir go together more obviously than one might initially assume. Both are dominated by feelings of alienation, femme fatales, a distinct vernacular, betrayals, questionable morality and, frequently, bleak endings. And then there's the fatalism, the overwhelming sense that one is doomed and that every moment could bring about the end of the world.

"Veronica Mars" has been perfectly melding teen angst and film noir conventions for two years. Now Rian Johnson's "Brick" takes matters a step further by placing a plot inspired by Dashiell Hammett's "Red Harvest" in high school.

The fatalism begins early in "Brick." The opening scene features Brendan (a brilliant Joseph Gordon-Levitt) finding a lady in a lake: his ex-girlfriend Emily ("Lost's" Emily de Ravin) has been killed and left in a stream of water. The film then flashes back to the days leading up to Emily's murder. Brendan hasn't seen Emily in days when he receives a frenzied note and phone call from her about a "brick," a "pin" and a "tug." With the help of his only friend The Brain (Matt O'Leary), Brendan figures out that Emily has run afoul of 26-year-old pseudo-crime boss The Pin (Lukas Haas) and his muscle Tug (Noah Fleiss) because of a brick of drugs that was tainted.

Like any good shamus, Brendan attempts to solve the case by insinuating himself into the clique with all the power: the in-crowd. He's soon embroiled with two femme fatales — poor little rich girl Laura (Nora Zehetner) and man-eating drama queen Kara (Meagan Good) — and thoroughly beaten by Tug on his way to a breakfast meeting with the "Lord of the Rings" loving Pin.

No "Bugsy Malone," "Brick" is as quintessentially noir as 1947's "Out of the Past," following genre conventions and exploding them with more reverence than what "Scream" did to horror. "Brick" most notably veers from established noir tropes in its use of light. Where films like "The Maltese Falcon" were influenced by the chiaroscuro of German Expressionism and contained a 10:1 ratio of dark to light, "Brick" cinematographer Steve Yedlin practically inverts that, turning "Brick" into a film soleil. Shot in San Clemente, Calif., many of the scenes take place during the day with solar flares and shots of the sun dominating the aesthetic.

Johnson's use of language is pure noir, though. With the verve of Anthony Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange," Johnson creates a new slang, introducing, or re-introducing, "bulls," "duck soup," "reef worm," "scape" and "yeg" into the teen vernacular.

From the first shot of a bracelet-adorned hand lying lifeless in water to the gut-punch finale where Laura whispers a "dirty word" into Brendan's ear, "Brick" is noir to its core and, in many ways, one of the truest cinematic evocations of teen life in years.

Posted Friday, May 26, 2006

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/film/brick