Brick: Rating: 5 stars

A teenager (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) digs up the truth on his girlfriend's (Emilie de Ravan) death.

Brick (2005)
2005 · R · Thriller
Reviewed June 12, 2009

At first glance, the film's concept sounds ridiculous: a classic noir plot, Hammettian and all, set in a present-day Californian high school. Instead of a surly gumshoe, there's a surly teenage boy with a knack for detection; instead of cops, school officials and parents; instead of hookers and femme fatales, there are druggies and poor little rich girls.

You'll know within the first five minutes whether or not this works for you. If it doesn't, fine; the slang of the '40s does sound strange in the mouths of modern teenagers, at least at first, and the conceit just won't sit right for some viewers. But if you can get on board, it's a wonderful ride. The initial strangeness of the script is easy to adjust to after the first few scenes — at first I had the subtitles on because everyone was talking too fast to be understood, then I kept them on because I was loving the lingo so much that I wanted to make sure I caught every word — and the dialect has an oddly haunting rhythm to it that catches the ear and holds it well. The classic stereotypes of noir film also translate surprisingly well to a high-school setting: the private eye, the femme fatale, the likeable sidekick, the thugs and crimelords. Though the film doesn't shy away from having its teenage protagonists experience the full, dark spectrum of noirish melodrama, it's also slyly self-aware of the incongruousness of children trapped in adult situations; at one point, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's bitter "gumshoe" character treats his principal to a snarling rant about the latter's prying habits, ending with the words, "… and you'll see me at the parent-teacher conference!"

The mystery itself is a well-done update of an old tale: boy loves girl, boy loses girl, boy tries to find out who took the girl. Gordon-Levitt alone could have sold the film with his stone-faced performance and the pain in his eyes — sorry to wax rhapsodic, but damn, that boy can act! — but the rest of the cast handle their parts with equal aplomb. (I'm trying right now to think of a weak link to pick on, but I can't come up with one.)

By the time the film winds to its conclusion — a somewhat predictable one based on the noir stereotypes, but no less interesting and worthwhile for all that — the lingo has lost its strangeness and the setting isn't something to laugh at. This is one film that sticks in the memory — like Dark City, it's good film noir with a saucy twist.