Hard Boiled: 90210
Brick is a nice throwback to the bad ol' days of film noir. At least part of it is. It's also teen drama about the dangers of cliques and high school romance. The story is one that could easily have been an episode of Beverly Hills 90210 or even 21 Jump Street. Instead writer/director Rian Johnson has made a hard boiled detective story whose backdrop is a sunny Southern California suburban high school. While Sam Spade and Phillipe Marlowe were semi-alcoholic P.I.s the protaganist of Brick is a slightly geeky high school upperclassman. Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt of 3rd Rock From the Sun) still loves the girl who left him to join the popular group, and when Brendan thinks she is in trouble he does everything he can to help her out. He enlists the help of school genius (you know he's a genius because the first time you see him he is quickly solving a Rubik's Cube), beats up a stoner and goes, uninvited, to a popular-kid party where the kids wear silk dresses and togas, drink whiskey, play the piano and recite poetry. There was something about D.P. Steve Yedlin's photography of this party that made me think of the orgies from Eyes Wide Shut, even though there is no sex in this movie.
When Brendan finds his beloved ex dead, he becomes an underage Marlon Brando. Ploughing through the underworld of his school to find out what happend to her. He beats up a jock, has cryptic conversations with a drama student, falls for a femme fatale, and organizes a teenage gangster peace summit. Of course he does all of this without ever going to class or bothering to call his mother to say he'll be home late.
Brick does a good job of imitating classic 1940s film noirs, except for a few details that I'll get to later it is a very well made homage to the genre. The movie has all of the requisite characters for an underworld crime drama: the detective, the brainy assistant (called Brain, in this case), the dangerous and gorgeous women, the crime boss, and hotheaded thugs. The actors fit their roles very well, each of them accurately portraying the necessary qualities. There aren't any gray areas for the characters in this movie, they're all either good or bad. The only person explored even a little deeply is Brendan, and that's only because many of the other characters tell him about himself and what they think of him. For me the highlight of the film was Nora Zehetner, who played Laura this story's femme fatale. I had never seen her in anything before, but by the end of the movie it occured to me that she is a younger, prettier, and more talented version of Katie Holmes.
The were two details about the story that really interested me. First was the photography, Johnson subsitutes the crowded streets and back alleys of New York or Chicago for sunny and empty Southern California. The students in this movie occupy areas of the school like theater, football field, and parking lot like gangsters and their urban turf. Brendan travels between these areas, always an outsider, conniving and fighting for the information he needs. The geography of the film's high school is seemingly abstract, with walls, open spaces, and alleys all there because it fit the plot. Reminiscent of the Central Park meetings in Wall Street Brendan meets his informants at the fifty yard line of the high school football field when he needs discrection. Whatever town the school is in needs only a few streets so no more are shown, there is a tunnel of some sort, simply there because it was written into the script. The clouldess California sky fills the movie with a bright blue to sharply contrast the dirty whites and asphalt blacks of the high school. The only time we are inside the school is the Assistant Vice Principal's office (an always cool Richard "Shaft" Roundtree) where Brendan is treated like a rogue detective ignoring his normal work load.
This is after all the suburbs, so when we do see the inside a home it is filled with knickknacks and brown furniture. The gag the town drug dealer lives with his mom is only kind of funny when you realize that most drug dealers do live with their moms. However, Mom serving corn flakes and apple juice at a criminal sit down is pretty funny.
There was one thing that really prevented me from getting fully into the movie and its story. There was something too inherently silly to me about hearing the Hammett/Chandler/Thompson-speak coming out of the mouths of relative babes. Listening to these kids referring to "gats", "bulls", and "making a play", I couldn't help but picture a kindergarten class putting on a version of The Sting. There is something so stylized about this language that I find it even somewhat odd when I hear it in a color film. It seems sometime that only men in grey coats standing in black alleys should talk like that. It's not that I didn't like the writing, I actually thought it was very good. In fact there was one reoccuring dialogue theme that I really enjoyed. In an interesting mishmash of high school and film noir Brendan kept telling to find him "where I eat lunch." And when he wanted to know who someone was hanging around with he simply asked "Who was she eating lunch with?" i found this quite smart considering the importance of what table one sits at during lunch. At least it does in movies about high school.
According to IMDB this is the first movie that Johnson has directed since film school. I think that he did a very good job, writing an interesting story and finding a good visual way of telling it. He is a talented director who appears able to coax very good performances even when the actors have only one dimension to play with. The movie has some very funny, very tender, and very smart moments and all around I really enjoyed it.
When Brendan finds his beloved ex dead, he becomes an underage Marlon Brando. Ploughing through the underworld of his school to find out what happend to her. He beats up a jock, has cryptic conversations with a drama student, falls for a femme fatale, and organizes a teenage gangster peace summit. Of course he does all of this without ever going to class or bothering to call his mother to say he'll be home late.
Brick does a good job of imitating classic 1940s film noirs, except for a few details that I'll get to later it is a very well made homage to the genre. The movie has all of the requisite characters for an underworld crime drama: the detective, the brainy assistant (called Brain, in this case), the dangerous and gorgeous women, the crime boss, and hotheaded thugs. The actors fit their roles very well, each of them accurately portraying the necessary qualities. There aren't any gray areas for the characters in this movie, they're all either good or bad. The only person explored even a little deeply is Brendan, and that's only because many of the other characters tell him about himself and what they think of him. For me the highlight of the film was Nora Zehetner, who played Laura this story's femme fatale. I had never seen her in anything before, but by the end of the movie it occured to me that she is a younger, prettier, and more talented version of Katie Holmes.
The were two details about the story that really interested me. First was the photography, Johnson subsitutes the crowded streets and back alleys of New York or Chicago for sunny and empty Southern California. The students in this movie occupy areas of the school like theater, football field, and parking lot like gangsters and their urban turf. Brendan travels between these areas, always an outsider, conniving and fighting for the information he needs. The geography of the film's high school is seemingly abstract, with walls, open spaces, and alleys all there because it fit the plot. Reminiscent of the Central Park meetings in Wall Street Brendan meets his informants at the fifty yard line of the high school football field when he needs discrection. Whatever town the school is in needs only a few streets so no more are shown, there is a tunnel of some sort, simply there because it was written into the script. The clouldess California sky fills the movie with a bright blue to sharply contrast the dirty whites and asphalt blacks of the high school. The only time we are inside the school is the Assistant Vice Principal's office (an always cool Richard "Shaft" Roundtree) where Brendan is treated like a rogue detective ignoring his normal work load.
This is after all the suburbs, so when we do see the inside a home it is filled with knickknacks and brown furniture. The gag the town drug dealer lives with his mom is only kind of funny when you realize that most drug dealers do live with their moms. However, Mom serving corn flakes and apple juice at a criminal sit down is pretty funny.
There was one thing that really prevented me from getting fully into the movie and its story. There was something too inherently silly to me about hearing the Hammett/Chandler/Thompson-speak coming out of the mouths of relative babes. Listening to these kids referring to "gats", "bulls", and "making a play", I couldn't help but picture a kindergarten class putting on a version of The Sting. There is something so stylized about this language that I find it even somewhat odd when I hear it in a color film. It seems sometime that only men in grey coats standing in black alleys should talk like that. It's not that I didn't like the writing, I actually thought it was very good. In fact there was one reoccuring dialogue theme that I really enjoyed. In an interesting mishmash of high school and film noir Brendan kept telling to find him "where I eat lunch." And when he wanted to know who someone was hanging around with he simply asked "Who was she eating lunch with?" i found this quite smart considering the importance of what table one sits at during lunch. At least it does in movies about high school.
According to IMDB this is the first movie that Johnson has directed since film school. I think that he did a very good job, writing an interesting story and finding a good visual way of telling it. He is a talented director who appears able to coax very good performances even when the actors have only one dimension to play with. The movie has some very funny, very tender, and very smart moments and all around I really enjoyed it.