Movie Maven

A note: Hello kids, did you miss me? The rampaging King Kong of exams has finally been shot down and I can get back to the business at hand. This review is coming a little late (I actually saw it about a week ago) but its memory still lingers pleasantly in my drained, post-finals mind. So enjoy!

Brick (2005)
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Nora Zehetner, Lukas Haas
Written and Directed by: Rian Johnson
Official Website

(Photo: Jospeh Gordon-Levitt, courtesy of Cinema St. Louis)

There are people who hate this movie.

As opposed to the waves of mediocrity (and similarly mediocre reviews) that most recent films tend to bring, Brick has inspired a venom that reviewers usually reserve for Dr. Suess adaptations and post-Bodyguard Kevin Costner flicks. At the New York critics' screening, according to Andrew O'Hehir of Salon, several walked out of the theater, one griping that "life is too short." But despite this, it nabbed the Sundance Special Jury's Prize for Originality of Vision, and has garnered itself decidedly mixed reviews ever since.

And so that is how I went to see Brick on a warm spring Saturday evening- looking for something to either despise or love with equal passion.

And I loved it.

Most summaries you Google will tell you that it's a re-imagining of Dashiell Hammett's detective noir of the '30s and '40s, a la The Maltese Falcon and Red Harvest, set in a Southern California high school. A Bogart thriller if Bogart was a cast member of The OC. But it is so much more than that. Newcomer Rian Johnson's film exists in a world all its own, a world he built using not only Hammett, but everyone from David Lynch to Quentin Tarantino to the Coen brothers. Brendan (played by wonderful Gordon-Levitt, whom I've loved since that ghastly Third Rock from the Sun sitcom,) goes on a search to find out what happened to his ex-girlfriend Emily (Lost's Emilie De Ravin.) Eventually Brendan finds his way into the inner circle of The Pin (Lukas Haas,) a 26-year-old dope-dealer. He crawls deeper and deeper into the underbelly of his idyllic suburb, looking for answers, and, finally, revenge.

There are maybe three adults in the entire film, and the teenagers themselves talk in hard-boiled crime novel-speak, using terms like "hooked," "yegs," and "dames." There is nary a "dude" or "awesome" to be heard. And the entire tone of the movie switches and twists, keeping the audience on its toes. Sometimes its a black comedy. Sometimes its a noir thriller. Sometimes its a teen movie. This jumping around doesn't seem to sit well with many, but for me it simply means that Johnson defies clear description. He is paying homage to the kinds of films he loves. But simultaneously he is breaking them down, mixing the parts together and building it back up, like some sort of genre Frankenstein. And the most fabulous bit is that it works. Like Brendan, we never know whats around the corner.

The filming is beautiful, a classic view of the sparse southern California landsape with no real center. And it's a view of a teenager's world: a universe of school parking lots and classrooms, of underpasses and pothead hang-outs, of warm maternal kitchens and smelly basements. The plot is a fantasy, the stakes much higher that most high schoolers are used to. But the world will be eerily familiar to anyone who can remember. Ironically, it's a more realistic vision of the high school experience than anything dreamed up by the purveyors of She's All That and 10 Things I Hate About You.

His actors are better, too. Levitt is every bit the outcast, hunched up in an oversized jacket. He spits Hammett-esque lines with the driest wit and his performance melds amoeba-like between campiness and serious noir. But the stand-out is Haas as The Pin, who's terrifying even as he's being very very funny. He strolls humorlessly around the screen in a goth wizard's cape, carrying a cane with a duck's head on it. He waxes poetic about Tolkein "the hobbit guy," vaguely reminiscent of Travolta's soliloquy on the Royale with cheese. He is, in many ways, the embodiment of Brick: funny and serious, goofy and terrifying, derevitive and highly original.

Whether you love or hate Brick, there is no denying that Johnson is a director to watch. Divisiveness is the name of the game- it creates fodder for that elusive pixie "buzz," which can keep a director's career running long enough to make another movie. And there's no doubt in my mind that Johnson has a few more tricks up his sleeve.

A note: Apologies to Dashiell Hammett, who's name I spelled wrong in a prior version of this posting. (Were he alive, I'm sure he would be terribly offended.)