Brick
Review by Fritz Esker
The idea of setting a Dashiell Hammett-style noir against the backdrop of a southern California high school seems like it easily become overly cutesy and gimmicky. However, first-time writer-director Rian Johnson pulls it off in Brick largely because he plays it straight. Too much winking at the audience probably would have ruined it, but aside from the setting, Johnson plays his film straight.
Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is an outcast at his school. He gets a distressed phone call from his ex-girlfriend (Lost's Emilie de Ravin) and shortly thereafter, she goes missing. Brendan then descends into an underworld of drug dealing headed by the Pin (Lukas Haas), a 26-year-old dealer who still lives with his mother. Of course, there is a femme fatale (Nora Zehetner) who Brendan is never quite sure if he can trust. Like in any Hammett novel, the hero begins playing different people off of each other, culminating in a violent climax for many involved.
Gordon-Levitt does solid work in the lead and Johnson's writing features some memorably hard-boiled lines and a decent plot (although its machinations will be very familiar to anyone who has read Hammett). The film is not an across-the-board masterpiece like Miller's Crossing (the Coen Brothers' homage to Hammett's The Glass Key). If you are not into noir, you might not be interested in this and find the proceedings a tad confusing. However, noir fans and many others should find this an entertaining debut from a noteworthy writer-director.