Brick
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Movie Reviews of Brick
Movie Review: "Lunch is Difficult"
Summary: 5 Stars
Ever wonder what "The Maltese Falcon" would be like if it was set in high school? Well, I have. And even if you haven't, Rian Johnson's "Brick", an homage to classic film noirs, is well worth a look.
While there's many parallels to Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon" (even the item the title refers to is sort of a modern equivalent of the "black bird"), as well as Raymond Chandler's mysteries and other stories of the genre, "Brick" has more than enough unique twists and turns of its own. The story begins when anti-social reject Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) accepts a phone call from his ex-girlfriend ("Lost"'s Emilie deRavin). She rambles off a series of slang terms and nicknames Brendan's never heard of. Brendan immediately sets out to meet her face to face by infiltrating one social clique after another, starting by getting himself invited to a party hosted by a wealthy cheerleader and her jock boyfriend. Two days later, Brendan discovers his ex's body. He hides the body so he can bring the people behind her death to justice himself, at the same time making himself a suspect in her murder.
Several of the classic noir hallmarks are there. There's the well-informed sidekick (Matt O'Leary), the intimidating crime boss (college-aged drug-dealer "The Pin", played by Lukas Haas), his hired muscle (Noah Fleiss), the troublesome junkie (Noah Segan), the by-the-book authority figure (Richard "John Shaft" Roundtree) and not one but two drop-dead-gorgeous femme fatales, cheerleader Laura (Nora Zehetner) and drama club member Kara (Meagan Good). The hero dishes abuse, takes abuse, and cracks wise like a Humphrey Bogart character. But everyone delivers their lines (riddled with slang terms from the 30's, 40's, and 50's, as well as several invented by Johnson) and actions so casually and with such conviction that they seem natural and the movie never devolves into spoof. And, like any good film noir, the movie stays gritty without ever being crass or in bad taste. All this with just a dollop of high school angst in the mix.
Nathan Johnson's score is one of the highlights of the film. Like the movie, the score has an Indie feel, a contemporary feel, and a retro feel, all at once, with a hint of jazz. Reoccuring character themes lend dramatic emphasis to the film. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's performance will make you forget all about the role he played in the comedy series "3rd Rock from the Sun." But the true stand-out performance is by Nora Zehetner, who is glamorous in the best old-fashioned sense, and could definitely go places.
Movie Review: It gets better and better...
Summary: 5 Stars
`Brick' is one of those films that has aged very well with me. I remember when I first say it and I really liked it a lot. Over time I had forgotten just how much I liked this until I happened to catch it a while back and became instantly absorbed in it once again. With dialog as fresh and sharp as the words expressed in `Juno', yet more residual thanks to the noir'ish themes, `Brick' just `gets it'.
I love the feel of `Brick'. This is a film that knows what it wants to be. It indulges in and totally embraces the thickly detailed atmosphere that makes it stand alone, apart from comparables. The film never feels amateurish or `silly'. Instead, it balances the absurd details of the surroundings by elevating the core themes, keeping each character believable as apposed to a cleverly inserted caricature.
Rian Johnson is just, well, awesome.
Taking place mainly on school grounds, `Brick' tells the story of Brendan, a curious teen who gets a message from his girlfriend claiming to need help. Taking that message and running with it, Brendan finds himself deep in high-school crime, and when his girlfriend shows up dead, things get even stickier for Brendan as he meets and evaluates a variety of teens dwelling in the school's underbelly. Drugs and murder fester as Brendan steps closer to the truth, eluded by a mysterious girl named Laura and a drug kingpin known as The Pin.
Thank you Joseph Gordon-Levitt for being the acting god that you are. I can't wait for the whole world to embrace you as `the next best thing' and for you to completely make the cinematic world your breeding grounds. Seriously, is there anything this kid can't do? As Brendan, Gordon-Levitt adds so much weight to the films premise, aiding Brendan with a subtle edge that makes him believable and relatable. Megan Good and Mike O'Leary are also great; but it is Nora Zehetner, as rich girl Laura, who stays with me the longest. She was just outstanding, layering her characters mysteriousness with richly conceived moments that spark our interest.
Thanks to a poetic script and a sharp directorial eye, `Brick' is the new age noir that understands how to pay homage without feeling like a cheaply disguised copycat. No, this is not the best noir ever (as some presumptuous teens have tried to claim) but it is one of the smartest takes on the genre in years. The noir is a hard genre to master, but `Brick' just oozes with enough charm and originality to take the cake here.
Fascinating is a word that best describes this film.
Movie Review: A smart thriller that will keep you glued to the screen...
Summary: 5 Stars
'Brick' is smart. It's a twist on the general crime noir, giving it an all too real feel by involving our deteriorating youth. The majority of this film takes place on school grounds or in mom and pops basement, but it never feels amateur or immature. This is mostly due to the cast of young actors who play their parts with sincerity and caution, not to appear too 'high-schoolish' while never crossing the line as to appear 'too old for the game' if you know what I mean. These are the high school students of today.
When Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) gets a message from his ex-girlfriend Emily (Emilie de Ravin) claiming to need help of some sort he finds himself delving deep into the underground ring of high-school crime, and when Emily shows up dead this leads Brendan to encounter and befriend (sort-of) all sorts of twisted teens, from the 26+ drug king known as The Pin (Lukas Haas) to his impatient strong arm Tug (Noah Fleiss) to the mysterious rich girl Laura (Nora Zehetner) who seems all to eager to help Brendan in his journey to uncover Emily's killer.
Joseph plays Brendan, the loner student who always hangs on the outskirts of trouble, with enough subtlety and lax to make him believable. You know he wants to help but you get the feeling it's not just because he feels he has too; I think he just knows that he can. I've been a fan of Joseph's for a while now, favoring his brilliant work in Mysterious Skin over unworthy Oscar nominee Terrance Howard last year, and with 'Brick' Levitt continues to prove his weight in gold. Meagan Good also turns out a convincing conniving manipulative tramp in the form of Drama Queen Kara, and Mike O'Leary does a great job as Brendan's confidant and friend The Brain.
The script is also a major plus, creating an almost poetic lingo for today's teens, giving the film an interesting perspective and leading to some very interesting conversations. Since there are a lot of those it's good to have dialog that grabs you and holds your attention. Some of the best dialog is shared between Brendan and The Brain, the both of them spitting off line after line fluently and effortlessly. As far as plot boilers go 'Brick' pulls no punches and it delivers 100% giving us something new, fresh and unique, something that if done wrong could have been disastrous, but with a brilliant script and acting to boot 'Brick' easily becomes one of the most fascinating and memorable thrillers in the recent years.
Movie Review: "The Big Sleep" meets "The O.C."
Summary: 5 Stars
Rian Johnson's "Brick" won a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Festival for originality of vision, and seldom has an award been more deserved. This witty, breathlessly entertaining low-budget flick conflates modern-day high-school angst with the mean-street conventions of 1940s detective fiction and movies. The surprise is that director/screenwriter Johnson plays the story absolutely straight, and gets away with it, while at the same time touching on some uncomfortable truths about growing up in America. Brendan Frye (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), whose delicate, poetic looks belie his limitless resources of toughness and courage, goes underground among his school's drug-addled "upper crust" to uncover the murderers of his ex-girlfriend Emily (Emilie de Ravin). He endures multiple beatings from the goon Tugger (Noah Fleiss), as well as threats from both The Pin (Lukas Haas), a cadaverous criminal mastermind who still lives with his doting mother, and Assistant Vice Principal Trueman (Richard Roundtree), who basically plays the Barton McLane role to Gordon-Levitt's Bogart. Then there are the femmes fatales in training, Laura (Nora Zehetner) and Kara (Meagan Good), who may or may not be helping Brendan. "Brick" is remarkably stylish and atmospheric for its miniscule budget; Johnson is masterful at capturing the claustrophobic milieu in which Brendan and his antagonists lurk. There are scenes of action and suspense here that put big-budget epics like "V for Vendetta" to shame, simply because Johnson knows how to edit, and because he makes us care about the characters, especially Brendan. I never paid much attention to Gordon-Levitt until I saw his performance as an emotionally damaged male prostitute in Gregg Araki's "Mysterious Skin." Based on his performances here and in that film, I would say that Gordon-Levitt is quickly becoming one of the truly great American screen actors. All the other actors are also fine, including Matt O'Leary as The Brain, Brendan's informant and only true friend, and Noah Segan as the pathetic "reef worm" Dode. Some critics have complained about "Brick's" convoluted plot and stylized dialogue--Johnson creates a language for his characters that is half Chandleresque slang, half teen speak. But for me they only added to the film's fascination. You'll probably need to see the film more than once to catch all the details, but, then again, you'll WANT to see it more than once. Myself, I can't wait for the DVD to come out.Movie Review: Different
Summary: 5 Stars
Writer/Director Rian Johnson's "Brick" is a film-noir, detective movie that is incredibly elabortate, surreal, and filled with really good-30s like dialogue. It's like a classic Humphrey Bogart movie, except with high school kids. Needless to say, not everyone will like it. When we meet Brendan Frye (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who proved he could really act in Manic) he's looking at the dead body of a girl. The story jumps back two days and we see this same girls hand slip a note inside a locker. The locker belongs to Brendan of course and the note gives him direction to go to a certain payphone and wait. When it rings, it's his ex-girlfriend Emily (Emilie De Ravin, 'The Hills Have Eyes')...Sounding distraught, she rambles on for a few minutes; Saying she's scared and asking for help, but then a car drives by causing her to hang up and flee. After doing some investigating, Brendan finally meets up with Emily who asks him to forget about it. The next day, she's dead. As Brendan searches for the culprit, with the help of his friend Brain (Matt O'Leary), he winds up in a surreal whirlwind of drugs, deceit, and murder. Overall, it sounds like pretty standard stuff...But it's a lot more elaborate than that. Making a "whodunit" movie nowadays is hard; It's been done so many times, that you can pretty much see every twist a mile away. That's not so with this film. The plot twists are piled on heavily and you don't know "whodunit" until the very end, but this movie doesn't rest its fate in the hands of whodunit. What happens as Brendan tries to figure out what's going on is actually really entertaining to. As I said, the dialogue is very Bogart-like;
Coming from high-school kids (although Levitt's 26 and De Ravin is in her twenties I think) dialogue like this should seem campy and unrealistic, but it works. Even the stuff in this movie that seems overly campy (there's a character named The Pin, a big time drug runner who's got a hired muscle named Tug; Both of whom are a big part of the story) works perfectly in the way this film is made. This movie is very elaborate, so pay close attention to it. The cinematography and the gloomy mood the film has is great. If you're into interesting and elaborate films (this movies does remind me of The Machinist a little bit. Only because of the cinematography and the music; The story has no similarities) then definitely see this movie.
GRADE: A-