Review: Brick


School loner Joseph Gordon-Levitt receives a phone call from his troubled ex (Emilie De Ravin) asking for him to help her out, but later refuses his help when he finally catches up with her. Not long after, he discovers her dead body, and decides to investigate what happened, with the help of The Brain (Matt O’Leary). The trail leads him through an array of bizarre rich kids, assorted low-lives and druggies like Noah Segan and Noah Fleiss, and then there’s The Pin (Lukas Haas), a somewhat elusive but notorious cane-sporting local kingpin who still lives with his mother. Richard Roundtree plays the Assistant Vice Principal (who wants whatever Gordon-Levitt finds) as though he were a hard-arse police chief (and why not, Roundtree has done little else but play police chiefs for the last 25 years), and dresses Gordon-Levitt down like a rogue detective. I half expected him to ask the kid to turn in his gun and badge! Nora Zehetner (the rich girl) and Meagan Good (the melodramatic theatre chick) play a pair of femme fatales who figure into the story.

 

Top marks for being different from anything else you’ve likely seen, this bizarre 2005 Rian Johnson film mixes John Hughes-ish high school material with drug dealing flick, and has the characters all spouting noir jargon. It isn’t for a second believable (though it is not intended as parody at all), nor is it anything other than a stunt (a somewhat incoherent one at times), but it sure ain’t dull. Haas is absolutely brilliant, his character does all his dealings from the basement in his house, with clueless mom serving OJ for her son’s guests. Priceless! Gordon-Levitt is solid in the lead, and hey, John Shaft himself (Roundtree) is in here too. Most of the other performances are a bit spotty, with particularly affected ones by Good and Zehetner as femme fatales.

 

The screenplay is by the director (with mucho impenetrable dialogue), his extremely self-conscious debut. And am I the only one who thought that the use of the high school setting was somewhat arbitrary at the end of the day, given that aside from a couple of library scenes, no one seems to ever venture inside the place? At any rate, this doesn’t quite come off but it sure is weird and different. That might be enough for some.

 

Rating: C+

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