Brick (2006)
Directed by Rian Johnson
A teenage loner pushes his way into the underworld of a high school crime ring to investigate the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend.
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29 films that influenced Brick
What critics say influenced Brick
The largely accepted chronological definition of what �film noir� is is that it more or less began with The Maltese Falcon in 1941, and came to a triumphant end with Touch of Evil in 1958.
Yet by the end of the movie this awesome meathead has become a poignant figure, wounded by love and conscious that -- like Wilmer in The Maltese Falcon -- he's nothing but a pawn to his boss.
As the plot gets increasingly complex (though no more so than "The Maltese Falcon," to which this film gives many nods), "Brick" becomes less clever and more quirky; at times so overwrought that it becomes a little silly.
If the great mystery writer Dashiell Hammett ("The Maltese Falcon," "The Glass Key") had written about teenagers, it might have turned out to be quite a bit like "Brick," a moody puzzler written and directed by Hammett admirer Rian Johnson.
While Humphrey Bogart and the lowlifes that peppered hard-boiled masterpieces like “The Maltese Falcon” always seemed one small step away from disaster, the high schoolers in “Brick” also seem precariously balanced on a ledge.
Stephen Holden, writing in the New York Times, panned the movie as a "flashy cinematic stunt" and compared it unfavorably to Alan Parker's 1976 kiddie-gangster musical Bugsy Malone.
Alan Parker's " Bugsy Malone " (1976) was a 1930s gangster movie cast with pre-teen kids (including Jodie Foster ).
One of the obvious antecedents for this film is Alan Parker's regrettable "Bugsy Malone," where children (and a 13-year-old Jodie Foster) played cops and robbers.
As a premise, it sounds cutesy-horrible, like an overlong episode of Jim Henson's Hammett Babies (or worse, a vaguely ped curio along the lines of 1976's Bugsy Malone), but the conviction and earnest wit involved carries it well past the conceptual experiment stage into a genuinely effective reinterpretation of classic noir.
Johnson was lucky to land Gordon-Levitt for the role; a veteran of the sitcom 3rd Rock From the Sun, he's proved a formidable dramatic actor in indies like Manic (2001) and Mysterious Skin (2004), and in Brick he holds the screen as powerfully as Jack Nicholson in Chinatown.
Still, the lousy sound and a creeping narrative murk prevent ''Brick" from fully becoming the ''Chinatown" of high school flicks, and the final scenes don't lift off from private-eye cliches so much as cave in to them.
Taking visual cues from Chinatown, gifted DP Steve Yedlin favors shots from below, and stark under-populated exteriors that convey menace even in California sunshine.
It's true that Roman Polanski's "Chinatown," a 1974 neo-noir, was bathed in L.A. sunlight; but that film had an inventively sinister plot, and a dark sexual kink.
In fact, the movie most commonly referenced here is "Chinatown," the Jack Nicholson film that, while certainly noirish, was shot in color and released in 1974.
Brick is what it would have looked like if Bogart went to high school–an adolescent Chinatown with shades of Kurosawa, peppered with the rapid-fire, hard-boiled, cryptic speech of A Clockwork Orange and wrapped in the very deceptive skin of a teen drama.
Rian Johnson claims The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep as his main influences, but I also taste Blue Velvet and a dash of Napoleon Dynamite in the mix.
Brick may find its time and place in modernity but its soul is straight out of The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep.
The dialogue is obviously inspired by old-school crime novels, but the cinematic antecedents are much more Blue Velvet and Miller’s Crossing than The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep.
Still, Johnson’s connect-the-dots noir script gives him the chance to experiment with atmospherics, which owe a debt as much to Blue Velvet as to The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon.
Although itâs not The Big Sleep, Brick is hardly a snooze.
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Like many of Hammett's criminal masterminds -- Paul Madvig in The Glass Key, Kaspar Gutman in The Maltese Falcon -- the Pin is isolated by his power, and he seems to admire Brendan for his shrewdness and self-possession.
If the great mystery writer Dashiell Hammett ("The Maltese Falcon," "The Glass Key") had written about teenagers, it might have turned out to be quite a bit like "Brick," a moody puzzler written and directed by Hammett admirer Rian Johnson.
Richard Roundtree (the original “Shaft”) pops up as a vice principal who pumps Brendan for the inside skinny on school goings-on, and the two trade weight back in forth in a very funny scene that nimbly upends the normal high school power structure.
Most notably, The Pin's mom (Reedy Gibbs) serves juice to her son's "friends," and the great Richard Roundtree (Shaft) co-stars as an assistant Vice Principal, the friendly, but not-so friendly, authority figure who attaches himself to Brendan's investigation.
In tracking her down, he enlists the services of the class geek genius, the Brain (Matt O'Leary), and warily joins forces with the contentious school principal (Richard Roundtree, far from his "Shaft" days).
The abuses are also literal, as Brendan steps into beatings, his pretty face smashed repeatedly, kicks and jabs fortified by big-fat throwdown sound effects (here he's looking like Dick Powell, pounded in Murder, My Sweet).
Indeed, Brendan takes such a physical beating during the course of the film that even Ralph Meeker, who played the pulverized Mike Hammer in the classic Kiss Me Deadly (1955), would wince in pain.
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Brendan is a complement to the scheming and lucky protagonist of “Miller’s Crossing,” while the story mines the same rambling confusion of “The Big Lebowski.”
Brendan is a complement to the scheming and lucky protagonist of “Miller’s Crossing,” while the story mines the same rambling confusion of “The Big Lebowski.”
Analysis: This review needs to be quantified with an opening statement addressing how much I love modern film noir, particularly the inventive take the Coen Brothers' displayed in "Miller's Crossing."
The dialogue is obviously inspired by old-school crime novels, but the cinematic antecedents are much more Blue Velvet and Miller’s Crossing than The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep.
Brick is a hardboiled detective narrative retrofitted to high school, where homeroom lockers fill in for smoky offices, assistant principals (Richard Roundtree!) apply police-commissioner levels of heat, and everyone talks in a knowingly archaic, Miller's Crossing–ish rapid-fire patter.
This review needs to be quantified with an opening statement addressing how much I love modern film noir, particularly the inventive take the Coen Brothers' displayed in "Miller's Crossing."
Even though we’ve seen films go down the same way since “Key Largo,” the final two scenes are exceptional.