Review: ‘Brick’ reinvents film noir style

“Act smarter than you look, and drop it.”

Lines such as these are obviously from a classic “film noir” or a Raymond Chandler or a Dashiell Hammett novel. One wouldn’t think

of them as being bits of dialogue from a movie set in suburbia whose characters are all high school students.

Surprise! The dialogue fits into both categories, thanks to first-time director Rian Johnson’s film, “Brick.”

Taking a cue from films such as Baz Luhrman’s “Romeo + Juliet,” Alan Parker’s “Bugsy Malone” and classic-literature-in-a-high-school-milieu films like “Clueless” and “Cruel Intentions,” Johnson has borrowed the film noir style and sensibilities and transported it to the public school system.

Homage

The result is both an homage (with tongue placed firmly in cheek) and a successful, albeit out-of-the-normal-bounds, film noir tale.

Shot in three weeks on an impossibly low budget and edited on the director’s personal Mac, “Brick” has a low-budget look and feel. But that feel merely adds to the grittiness that is a prerequisite of the film noir style.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, best known as the young alien Tommy Solomon on TV’s “3rd Rock from the Sun,” stars as Brendan. Brendan is a quiet high school student who is somewhat of a loner. True to the “noir” formula, Brendan is nursing a broken heart and is sour on women after a recent breakup with his girl. Or rather, his gal, that dame, the skirt …

As the film opens, Brendan is seen in a drainage culvert, staring at a dead girl lying in the trickling water. We are unaware who she is at this point in time but the story immediately cuts back to two days earlier.

Brendan’s ex-girlfriend Emily – now we know who was dead in the culvert – meets him briefly and babbles about being in trouble. She uses words like “brick” and “the pin,” which are cryptic to Brendan.

‘The Brain’

He sets about trying to find out in which circles Emily is now running and enlists the help of a friendly nerd known as “The Brain.” The two of them begin to unravel a mystery that involves various high school gangs and a drug cartel of kids led by a boy known as “The Pin.” Lukas Haas is great with his portrayal of this unique and complex character. When Brendan first meets Pin on his home turf, he’s roughed up by Pin’s boys and then taken upstairs where Pin’s oblivious mother serves him apple juice and cookies. This scene is hilarious, but neither Johnson’s script nor the actors ever “wink.” Everyone plays it serious.

Pin’s mom is one of only two adults in the film; kids command this universe. The other adult is the vice principal of Brendan’s high school. Brendan goes to him to make a deal. In a normal noir, this would be a private eye who sometimes stretches the law, making a deal with a police detective. Again, “Brick” plays it straight.

Brendan gets deeper and deeper into the mystery, closer and closer to the real story and is time and time again beaten silly. The high school muscle boys employed by Pin are as tough and menacing as any strong-arm men in service to the mob bosses in “grown-up” films.

As always. there’s a “femme fatale,” here in the person of Laura Dannon, played by Nora Zehetner. Laura plays all the angles and for most of the film we don’t know whose side, besides her own, she might be on.

Convolution

Convolution of plot is another ingredient out of the film noir cookbook that is evident here. That’s not a criticism, merely an observation. When things are spelled out in detail at the end by two of the main characters in turn, there are some head-scratching surprises.

And fans of film noir will be surprised that there are still new twists on an old formula.

This style is a mainstay of filmmaking, and while its glory days were in the 1940s, every decade since has seen plenty of films noir in release. Recently the Coen Brothers have given us classics like “Fargo,” “Blood Simple” and “Miller’s Crossing.” Other great “noirs” of late include “Reservoir Dogs,” “Sin City,” “LA Confidential” and “A Simple Plan.” Johnson’s “Brick” is a welcome and original addition to the group.

What is “film noir”?

Literally: black film or cinema. The term, used to describe a movie’s mood, style, point of view or tone, was coined by French film critics describing the black-and-white American crime and detective films that first evolved in the 1940s. Early examples are “The Maltese Falcon,” “Murder, My Sweet,” “Double Indemnity” and “Laura.” Orson Welles is perhaps the most famous film noir director, with such movies as “Citizen Kane” and “The Lady from Shanghai.”

Source: www.filmsite.org

Jim Wunderle owns Wunderle Sound Services and is a Springfield free-lance writer and musician. He can be reached at info@wunderlesound.com.