Movie Review
By James Roland
"Brick"
Saved by the Bell: The Noir Years
Brick came out of nowhere in 2005 and garnered some Sundance buzz, then floated around the indie world for a while before moving to DVD. It's a shame the film didn't grab any attention at the Academy Awards, but Brick just isn't the sort of film to get people talking; it's the sort of film to get people thinking.
Brick is a detective story in fine form, giving a polite nod to The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep, but daring to innovate and breathe new life into a classic genre. As in the films of the noir masters, the plot of Brick twists and turns, there is plenty of murder and double-cross, and beautiful women are neither guilty nor innocent but all smoke long, slender cigarettes.
All this may sound intriguing or may sound run of the mill, but what Brick brings to the table is an interesting new slant: the whole story is set in a high school. Transplanting high school cliques into an old-time detective story may seem gimmicky, but it created an original and intriguing drama instead of fodder for the Blockbuster bargain barrel.
Brick was directed by Rian Johnson, who also wrote the novella and subsequent screenplay. The amazing visual style he conceived with cinematographer Steve Yedlin is rivaled only by his story instincts and completely unique dialog (The kids run around speaking an ultra-cool dialect that sounds like a blend of David Mamet and WWII Navajo code).
Mixing genres, the filmmakers create a seedy, stylized, almost fantastical world filled with sex, drugs, and violence. Kids commit dirty deeds in a parentless environment, they gauge right and wrong by their own immature standards, and their hormones are always in conflict with their intellects.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Brendan Frye, a scrappy loner with a sarcastic tongue and a steel trap for a brain. He is a player of the players, watching life from the side and seeing how all the pieces fit before he makes a move. When he gets a frightened phone call from his ex-girlfriend, Emily (played by Emilie de Ravin of Lost fame) Brendan gets pulled back into the game. He faces off against warring school rivals, using his wits and his fists to unearth Emily's tormenters and eventual murderers.
As the plot grows tangled, Brendan consults the school know-it-all, affectionately nick-named The Brain (Matt O'Leery). Gordon-Levitt and O'Leery are perfect foils, barely making eye contact while exchanging verbal gun fire and fighting to steal the scene from each other. Both actors had talented starts (Gordon-Levitt on the sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun and O'Leery in Bill Paxton's Frailty) but each has achieved new heights in this film. They take charge of every scene and weave characters with more depth and complexity than any real life high school student in the past two decades.
But even with The Brain's loyalty, Brendan is still the ultimate loner, molded so closely after Tom Reagan from the Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing that he could be Tom's great-grandson. He has the same pride, the same sarcasm and arrogance, and the same stubborn refusal to take care of his health. But, unlike Tom Reagan, Brendan isn't afraid to fight back. He takes on stoners, jocks, and faceless street thugs with bravado and the cleverest fight choreography in recent memory.
But what Brenden really shares with Tom Reagan (as well as Phillip Marlowe), is the loneliness of the outsider. He isn't a saint, but he stands alone against the tide of decadence that fills his school; the crooked vice principle, the drug-dealing cripple, the violent street thug, the spineless stoners and man-eating beauty queens.
Writer and Director Rian Johnson has dared to make a gritty drama that is surprisingly gentle. In the hands of Tarantino or Guy Ritchie, Brick might have had a techno-rap soundtrack and MTV editing. Instead, it has quiet intensity and emotion, a soul, a brain, and a heart, where all the others have mere cool.