Movies We Like: ‘Brick’ (2005)
by Chris Yogerst
Brendan Frye: “Your muscle seemed plenty cool putting his fist in my head. I want him out.”
The Pin: “Looky, soldier…”
Brendan Frye: “The ape blows or I clam.”
Fast and clever dialogue is one of the best things about hard boiled noir films of the past. Tough guys didn’t need to be big and buff; all they needed was a quick tongue to get them out of the stickiest of situations. Very few films are able to recreate this today.
Brendan Frye (in a sticky situation): “Throw one at me if you want, hash head. I’ve got all five senses and I slept last night, that puts me six up on the lot of you.”
Anyone who read my piece on the case for a film noir revival knows I am a die-hard fan of the genre. Of course, many films in recent years have tried to be noir and failed miserably (The Black Dahlia). One film that is a recent shining example of picture perfect neo-noir is Rian Johnson’s Brick.
This film takes the hard boiled detective novels of the post depression era and combines them with today’s high school drama. This is similar, in terms of adaptation, to how Robert Altman took Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and placed him in the 1970’s in The Long Goodbye to show us how he would fit in (which wasn’t well at all!). Brick is full of Marlowe-style dialogue. When it comes from high school aged kids it may seem strange at first, but it turns out to be a fun play of genre tropes.
Brendan Frye (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a loner whose ex-girlfriend, Emily (Emilie de Ravin), has gone missing. He has reason to believe she familiarized herself with a questionable group of people and was worried about her safety. She called him for help one day, but then advised him to forget about it and not get involved. This only built Brendan’s curiosity and when she mysteriously vanished, he began to dig deeper.
Brendan’s investigation leads him into a seedy underworld of drug dealers that he believes are linked to Emily’s death. He quickly finds that the best way to get the truth is to get close to these people. He finds himself in the midst of some rough and interesting company including a seductive femme fatale Kara (Meagan Good), sophisticated socialite Laura (Nora Zehetner), drug abusing Dode (Noah Segan), firecracker Tug (Noah Fleiss), and the infamous drug lord The Pin (Lukas Haas).
As Brendan gathers pieces of the puzzle, we see references to classic film noir. One of the femme fatales is named Laura, which is the title of a great 1944 film starring Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews. There is also a shot of a play from behind the curtain where we see a woman slap a man which is a direct replication of a sequence from Jules Dassin’s Rififi (1955). Another scene shows Brendan laying down looking up at a spinning ceiling fan which emulates a scene from the Coen Brother’s Blood Simple (1984).
The wardrobe in Brick also gives us a kick back to classic noir. Brendan’s shoes are a similar style to those popular in the 1940’s (he also rolls his pants up in a cuff). Kara’s stylish clothes appear to be a mild update from the femme fatales of years past. Both Kara and Laura embody what was crystallized in classic noir films. Everything from the way they walk and what they wear to the seductive looks they throw is deadly cool.
Aside from direct throwbacks, Brick is just as stylistically brilliant as the most aesthetically appealing of noir films. The film’s camerawork allows us to feel Brendan’s desperation as he searches for answers he knows aren’t good. There is a myriad of extreme low and canted angle shots along with high contrast and low-key lighting that can make even the most boring room look intimidating.
Brick is an overall excellent exercise in genre. It remains one of my favorite neo noir films to date. Not only is it dark and mysterious but it is also wildly entertaining. It plays like a combination of Blood Simple and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. Brick has everything a noir fan could possible want: mystery, murder, femme fatales, a seedy underground world and witty dialogue all while remaining aesthetically appealing. Films like this make me call for a full-on noir revival! Come on filmmakers, I know you have it in you!!
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Michael Chavez. Michael Chavez said: Movies We Like: ‘Brick’ (2005) http://bit.ly/o58oG [...]
Very creative and looks to be very entertaining. Actors in 1950's had masculinity todays kids lack. Understandable after decades of prosperity and left wing war on masculinity/ male aggression. Did the Pin pay his tax to the Mexican Mafia? If not the Avenues would drive across town and put him on notice.
Good movie! Glad to see I'm not the only one to enjoy it. I end up watching it pretty often, when I want to just kill some time.
One thing that really struck me about it was how brutal the fighting seemed. Not gory or over the top or anything…But the fighting had more impact on the characters than it does in a lot of other movies these days.
Luckily for me, before I saw this incredible film a critic warned me not to be thrown off by the fact that the actors were all kids. The critic warned me of the danger of not taking these actors seriously because of their young age and the fact that it literally takes place in a high school. I was to suspend judgment, the critic said, and just accept his word that this was damned good hard-boiled film noir that just happened to be performed by actors who'd only recently learned to shave. I gratefully thank that critic for his advice – because it allowed me to enjoy this film. Damn, was it good. I suspect that the reason this film didn't erupt at the box office was that the bulk of the audience didn't have that warning given to them beforehand. Naturally, they would have laughed out loud when they saw those kiddies on screen speaking like Bogie and Bacall. Unfortunately, by the time they stopped laughing and realized this was actually classic film noir, they were too far into the film to remember the vital clues and plot lines that had developed earlier. Too bad. They missed an awesome film.
But then of course, "we'll always have Netflix, sweetheart."
I was very impressed by _Brick_, especially by the way it managed to say something profound about the entire "noir" subgenre, or style, or whatever it is. Noir is fundamentally adolescent in outlook. The grownup world is full of icky stuff people don't want to talk about, but the lone hero asks the tough questions even if it brings everything crashing down. Authority figures can't be trusted, and as always the worst sin is hypocrisy. That's a hard attitude for anyone over the age of about twenty-five to take seriously, but it's the heart of noir. _Brick_ makes that adolescent attitude explicit by putting everyone in high school. It's a brilliant bit of deconstruction.
I just watched it on your recommendation. Excellent flick. The dialogue was my favorite part. I'm going to watch this one again tomorrow.
"KEYSER SOZE!!!"
I couldn't help myself
Thanks for the tip. I will be sure to check it out.
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Along with "(500) Days of Summer", that kid from 'Third Rock from the Sun" has found his way into some really good films.
Interesting flick indeed! Even more so because it's helmer Johnson's first big screen outing.
Glad to see someone mention this great flick.
I rented it when it first came out on DVD, stumbled on it in the new releases section, never heard of it, but reading the back of the case, it sounded interesting, which was more than could be said for the rest of the crap on the new release shelves that week, so I gave it a shot.
It DOES take some time to adjust to high school kids going noir (and doing it so well at that) but it's a quick adjustment, and once you're in, you're hooked.
Good call, Chris.
I said this a couple of days ago about why the studios don't want to make anything but the crap that's out these days:
My guess would be this: sensibilities are different now.
There doesn't seem to be much interest (from the studios) in film noir: "We don't want to make anything dark, it'll depress people."
They must pander to the right demographic: "We have to have at least one naked scene to bring in the teenagers."
And PC runs rampant: "We can't have ANY characters or dialogue that might offend someone!" And so on.
Just a thought.
Is it just me, or does Lucas Haas' character dress/look like Barnabas Collins of the old Dark Shadows TV show?
Yes, lighting, hair, cloak, cain. The expression on his face looks like the old vampire himself!
I've seen this film easily a dozen times since admiring my first viewing and it's easily cracked my top ten all-time favorites. I tend to agree with Cambias' observation – although I've never been a die hard Noir fan besides casual viewing on TMC. What was so brilliant by Johnson w/BRICK was how he fused Noir with the insular world of teenage angst. I got the same kind of hair raising eureka watching it that I got as a teen myself reading LORD OF THE FLIES. The savagery lurking barely below the surface in the petty drug game in suburban cleveland of the late seventies wasn't so alien in comparison to what Johnson & crew depicted in suburban cali a generation later. It's a rare feat – grasping the teenage world with largely young (mostly inexperienced) actors and feeding back a gem of a picture for teens and adults alike. BRICK is a very special accomplishment.
The whole film noir cum high school drama combo didn't work for me. Maybe I'll netflix it though and give it another shot.
I caught Brick by accident on one of my sat channels late at night and thought, WTF?! How come I never heard of this film? Objectively, I think the super-sophistication stretches credulity when applied to high school kids in this case, but it was an engrossing movie that I want to see again bad enough that I put it on my to-get DVD list.
If you DO get the FLU shot and something DOES happen, YOU CANT SUE
http://myfreepress.net/2009/us-government-gives-b...
I saw about half of Brick once. I will check out in total. I am certain the I am going to enjoy it.
Have to respectfully disagree with you on this one. I just found the conceit of setting a 30's noir in high school too offputting for me to enjoy this. I don't understand the desire to get all post-modern with a genre flick. If you want to do wise-cracking old school PI noir, then set it in the 30's or 40's and do a period piece. Had they done that, they'd have a great flick on their hands. The high school setting was so jarring set against the dialogue that I could just never take this seriously.
It actually reminded me of Ian McKellan's version of Richard III if you can believe that. They read Shakespeare's dialogue pretty much verbatim, but set the play in some fictional fascist Britain with everyone wearing pseudo-Nazi armbands and such. It completely takes you out of the play for two reasons. One, the archaic dialogue seems ridiculously out of place when read by a bunch of stormtrooper types. Second, isn't the play meaningful enough in and of itself without trying to make it yet another Hitler-and-the-Nazis-were-bad movie? Sheesh, Raiders of the Lost Ark is good enough at doing that!
I utterly agree. A delightful surprise. Brick is one of the best attempts ever to modernize noir. It's a smart, funny and intelligent little flick.
It's available on Instant Play at Netflix! Thanks for the recommendation.
This is what I loved about Nolte's old site. Perfect Tommy, how about some new Top Five lists?
I saw the script for this movie 6 years before it was filmed. My former roommate was one of the producers and the driving force behind getting it made (finally!). Although I admired the ambition of this project and consider myself a noir fan, the finished product left me a bit flat. My producer/former roommate ended up with a narrative that was too convoluted and too clever by half. Pity. And he's a Democrat (more's the pity).
But as a screenwriter myself, guess who's writing one of his upcoming projects? (and yes, I'm a Reagan conservative without apology)
Yeah, guys like Robert Mitchum, Sterling Hayden, Burt Lancaster and Charlton Heston. Guys who looked like guys.
I love film noir, but havent seen Brick. My favorite film noir is Asphalt Jungle. Sam Jaffe should have gotten an Oscar for Doc Riedenschnieder.
Just saw this for the first time a few days ago. Excellent film, I was shocked at how well the film noir genre fit within the confines of a high school
Yes. I dig "Brick" as well. Good movie.
Brick belongs in the company of Donnie Darko and Ghost World as smart, genre tweaking teen movies that stay with you and really make you appreciate the medium again.
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