Brick 2005

Brendan Frye (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is an extremely intelligent young man who is not afraid to support his claims with actions. Brendan is a high-school student at the Southern California high school. However, he prefers to stay out of everything.  He prefers to go unnoticed, but the only thing that makes him change is his ex-girlfriend Emily, that changes when Emily unexpectedly reappears to disappear without a trace. His feelings for her are still deep, so he will try to find her with the help of his only friend, this makes Brendan embark on a quest full of dangerous challenges.

The Brain played by Matt O’Leary provides him with the dark secrets of the students in his school and Brendan will come into conflict with strange characters like Laura (Nora Zehetner), a sophisticated rich girl, the thug Tugger (Noah Fleiss), the junkie Dode (Noah Segan), and the seductive Kara (Meagan Good).

For several years now, mixing genres has been fashionable, mixing them using all kinds of tricks, telling the same story that navigates between these genres, giving it a different touch of style, changing a typical argument of one of those genres and placing it in another context, etc. Everything has already been told, we just need to find a new original way to retell that story that we have already seen again and again. Sometimes they get it, sometimes they don't and sometimes they stay halfway. “Brick” belongs to this last group of movies. We could say that it tells the classic story of film noir, but set in an institute, so the characters are much younger than those who used to play these thrillers. This is the particular case of Brick, by adding a few drops to the mix, it produced a new kind of independent cinema that became so popular almost 2 decades ago, that is the reason why Brick won awards at festivals as prestigious as Sundance.

It is almost impossible not to sympathize from the beginning with Brick, the director’s debut of Rian Jonson, a genuine freak in the best of senses, who had previously worked as an editor in other teenage weird movies. How not to be hypnotized by a movie of teenagers in which they speak as the hard types of Hammett's novels and Bogart films? ---Brick is almost always fortunate in its attempt to recreate the lyrics and spirit of the classic film noir and the criminal pulp fiction of the 1920s, in the unusual and unexpected high school setting. But Johnson, who has been soaked by Lynch and the Coen brothers, inspired by Tarantino and American Film Noir, recreates a surreal and eerily timeless high school, a fantastic and referential world, where there are hardly any adults. And as always happens in the most sophisticated artificial universe as well as a kind of artificial cinematography, the characters work and carry the story, sometimes in an incredible and perhaps impossible manner. It is precisely because of this difficult balance between humor, postmodern self-referentiality, surrealism and adolescent intrigue drama that it seems to work well for Johnson as naturally as a rabbit appears from a wizard's hat. The film is intended for really cool viewers.  We can say that the best thing about is its visual atmosphere. The worst is the fact that sometimes it gets a little out of hand.

The somewhat messy argument as in any good film noir begins when our protagonist discovers that his ex-girlfriend, which has tried to contact him, has disappeared. In a web of events where nothing is what it seems, Brendan (the protagonist) will face increasingly tough guys without giving a single inch to discover what is hidden behind the disappearance of what was the woman of his life.

Making reference to the Film Noir canons, here we have the typical character; lost in love with a woman who no longer kisses or hugs him, and that lost, impossible love, marked by that type of “fire” is what makes him continue forward, despite of the word "loser" written on his forehead. In the same fashion, the protagonists of this type of stories are usually losers as well. Certainly with a certain charm, and almost always with nothing to lose, because what they wanted most they have already lost it.

Rian Johnson is assertive in the creation of an atmosphere very suitable for the story, an atmosphere of pure film noir. And also in the development of the argument, which is gradually becoming complicated, although in the final third part it gets confusing. Johnson had very few elements at his disposal to shoot this film, the budget must have been very poor, and yet he saved the film as few directors would have been able to do. Despite its obvious lack of means, the film distills a certain class, and that shortage is not a problem at all.

An aspect of the film that has been criticized is that it is very cold, and distant. Film noir is not like that, no matter how much they wanted to give it a twist here. This idea rested on nothing at all, thus this coldness plays against the film alarmingly. Many viewers will take time to enter the story or simply will not. Absolutely all the characters are so depressed that it seems from one moment to another they will make a collective suicide. This touch so characteristic of independent films does nothing but spoil much of the story. They could have saved it and the film would have worked better.

Regarding the acting; Joseph Gordon-Levitt who takes over the main character by filling it with carefully studied nuances. The rest of the cast is not honestly up to par. Nora Zehetner plays the typical femme fatale a classic in this type of story and the truth is that she baffles as much as she likes loosing the character’s control. On the one hand her strange beauty makes it suitable for the role, causing a certain fascination especially when she moves,  but on the other at certain times, she seems  too young to carry a role of these characteristics.

Today this film is destined to become a cult film if it isn’t one already, it collected several good reviews at the time of its release, although it is important to have these; the film also suffered from some failures that could have been easy to avoid.

Directed by Rian Johnson

Produced by Ram Bergman and Mark G. Mathis

Written by Rian Johnson

 Starring:

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Nora Zehetner

Noah Fleiss

Matt O'Leary

Noah Segan

Meagan Good

Emilie de Ravin

Richard Roundtree

Lukas Haas

Music by Nathan Johnson

Cinematography Steve Yedlin

Edited by Rian Johnson

Production company: Bergman Lustig Productions

Distributed by Focus Features

Release date:

January 2005 (Sundance Film Festival)

April 7, 2006 (United States)