Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Meagan Good
Directed By:
Rian Johnson
I watched Brick for what? Seven, eight times now? It's a movie I never get bored of, so I gave it another watch last Sunday morning. It's such a good Sunday morning movie anyway. It's also a good Friday night and a good Wednesday afternoon movie. You get my point, it's fucking awesome. But what is it exactly? Brick is a contemporary noir movie, set in a high school environment. Before even watching the movie, it started with a huge upside in my mind. Everybody can be rotten, old, young, poor, rich. slum dog or uptight suburban. Everybody. I was very happy that a movie finally had the balls to tackle this.
Our anti-hero is Brandon Frye (Gordon-Levitt), an broken hearted, early misanthrope, obsessing over his ex-girlfriend Emily (Emilie de Ravin). Originally, she dumped Brandon's ass because she couldn't bear the social stigma of being associated with Mr. Loathing, but her vulnerability and her need to connect will drive her to hang around with the wrong crew. And Brandon knows these people very well because he used to have a drug operation. He went clean because of Emily, only to see her fall to the very people he was trying to shield her from. Emily get brutally murdered and Brandon is determined to know why so he can at least sleep at night.
Brick plays on two levels, which makes it so flavorful. Yes, it's a noir movie, but it's also a movie that trashed the conventions of the teen genre. The jocks are pushovers, the cute and wide eyed girl is a poisonous vixen, the after school projects are cover up for a drug affair. Brick has an anger and a melancholy to it that sets it apart from the crowd. It's a movie at war with its time and with the loss of serious in teenage drama. High school, for many, is not the friendly cakewalk that Hollywood likes to portrait and Rian Johnson portrays this with enough truth to make it visceral and enough noir to keep fun and lean.
I can't recommend Brick enough. No matter what I say, it's a movie that need to be experienced first. It's not perfect, the plot is very complex and the dialog doesn't do it justice. You have to watch it several times if you want to understand it in it's entirety. The characters are a bit stereotype, but they are made to fit the conventions of noir and they do. Watch it. It will blow you away. If you're a fan of noir like me, it will sweep you off your feet.
SCORE: 95%
