Brick Movie Review

Brick (2005)

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Written by: Rian Johnson
Directed by: Rian Johnson
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lukas Haas, Emilie de Ravin, Richard Roundtree, Brian White
Rated: R
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Plot
A teenage loner pushes his way into the underworld of a high school crime ring to investigate the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend.

Verdict
This combines teen drama with the hard boiled detective genre. The genre dialog and slang is a lot of fun as it really sounds like a different world. It's not an easy feat to make this mash up work. Easily this could seem hokey, but this movie never devolves into silly. It does get a bit long, but the creativity and execution is impressive. The core mystery manages to remain entertaining.
Watch It.

Review
Rian Johnson was inspired by hard boiled detective novels from the '30s and it certainly shows. He pitched this script for years, but studios were hesitant with the concept of teen drama meets detective story in the hands of a first time director.

This crafts such a strange world. These are teenagers, but their dialog sounds much older than they are and there's a lot of slang that hearkens back to pulp detective stories. This creates such a mood as the mystery Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) resolves to solve is not just dark for high school, it would be dark for police.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Brendan Frye

This jumps right into it with Brendan's distressed girlfriend calling him. From there he picks through clues and variously nicknamed people to find Emily (Emilie de Ravin). He knows he should drop it, but he can't. Is it due to unrequited love, lingering feelings, or just something to do? Brendan can't drop it and jumps headfirst into the seedy underbelly of this town. The movie maintains the style and dialog well, it only falters when Brendan talks to the vice principal. It's a detective versus cop type conversation which is the point but stretches credibility. It's certainly theatrical, but this movie manages to execute well. Instead of being cheesy, it's intriguing. If the movie chose one genre, either the high school or detective genre, it wouldn't carry far. This combines the two and adds to the fascination. The reasons we don't see more movies like this is that it's a difficult feat to even do a mediocre job. This is much more than that.

Brendan keeps getting deeper into this mystery. No one is telling the whole truth as everyone has something to hide. This overstays it's welcome just a bit, but it rides on style and concept easily. It's clear to see Rian Johnson's skills from story to style. This idea could have been a flop, but the script and direction prevent that. It's an engrossing story, with the juxtaposition cutting both ways. 

It's not a mystery built to figure out on your own as you watch, but it doesn't seem illogical just to stump the viewer either. It's one of the better genre mash ups, all the more impressive as few people would have thought to combine teen drama with a hard edge detective story.