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Brick (2005)
Focus Feature
Director : Rian Johnson
Cast : Joseph Gordon Levitt, Lukas Haas, Matt O Leary, Noah Segan, Emillie de Ravin, etc

Just when u thought most flicks that came out recently are the products of ongoing remake/ replica/ reproduction/ regeneration, outcome this powerful smack-in-the-face teen-trash thriller. Or should we put it ‘teenage noir’. ‘Brick’ operates in the same structure with most 50s detective noir movie genre : slick, fast-paced script lines, doomed and dark characters, unexpected interwoven plot, and tragically dead blonde as the victim. So, what’s new? Well, here’s the twist: It sets in the modern contemporary deep suburb of So.Cal Americana. If you think this is gona be another fucking Hillary Duff/ Lindsay Lohan type, please stop here.

Instead of occupying suave Humprey Bogart style actor, young debutant director Rian Johnson put Joseph Gordon Levitt on the screen as ‘Brendan Fraser’, a high-school loner misfit who discovered her dead ex-girlfriend in the gutter, and tried to dismantle the mystery behind it with the aid of show-stealer sidekick ‘The Brain’ (Matt O Leary). Investigation leads to drug smuggling conspiracy (‘Brick’ refers to coke in block cuts) headed by the enigmatic dealer ‘Pin’ (Lukas Haas in his career defying performance. I swear, you’ll drool over his icy-coolness).

Other odd-with-the-world characters also scattered all over the 110 minute long movie : the aggressive thuggish ‘Tugger’ (Noah Fleiss) and substance-abusing Dode (Noah Segan) whom all involved in the triangle of affair along with Brendan. All chain-linked to Emily (Emillie De Ravin), the dead blond -who were also mysteriously pregnant- the source of deep turmoil of all three boys who came crashed onto each other on the fatal finale scene.

First time director Rian Johnson made this impressive debut with modest cost of $475.000. It took him two exhausting years just to collect funds from individuals after rejected by numbers of production companies. In 2003 the production began and released by Focus feature in 2005. It won him Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival nonetheless.

You could smell the noir genre influences throughout the movie. Being a major fans of the Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing and Hitchcock’s The Maltese Falcons, Johnson wears his influence on his sleeve. But the decision to give Brick narrative the twist of a suburban high school setting was to apply the film noir genre to a fresh set of visual cues. This is what makes the brilliance and significance of the whole flick as an artistic cinema piece : the blue hues screen, the dark element, the mysterious aura. Brick’s a splash of fresh renaissance that is needed in the much stale Hollywood industry that demanded to be seen.