Review: Brick (2005)

By: Aaron Jankowski

This is not your typical high school drama.

Actually, Brick is not your typical anything. It mixes every day high school drama with more mature themes such as unrequited love, drug running and murder.

The 2005 film written and director by Rian Johnson is a murder mystery played in the vein of old noir detective movies.

As the film opens, Brendan, played exceptionally by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is looking over the dead body of his ex-girlfriend Emily (Emilie de Ravin). Though, this is not the beginning of the story. Johnson’s tale begins when Brendan gets a note from Emily telling him to meet her. When he shows up at the location, he receives a phone call from a panicked Emily, who says she is in trouble, and then hurries off the phone. From here, Brendan’s adventure begins.

Gordon-Levitt is perfect as the flawed, over-protective hero who sets out not only to find who killed Emily, but more importantly, “Who put her in front of the gun.”

To solve his case, Brendan ruffles the feathers of everyone in his high schools social hierarchy, from the stoner Emily is dating to the jocks she was known to hang around with. Though, most of his battles are clever exchanges of wits, there are a few action sequences that are as grizzly as real life after school fights.

Brick avoids becoming a cliché by absorbing everything cheesy about the genre and spitting it out in a dark twisted mockery of itself. It’s almost impossible to decide if Brick is a homage to film noir detective stories, or a legitimate story of itself. It has all the regular players in a detective story, including a creative take on the Lieutenant looking for a reason to call his detective off the streets.

Yes, the characters in this film are high school students. Yes, they have to deal with class, principals and parents. And no, the film does not ignore that there would be a police investigation into the murder of a high school student.

Johnson just works around all these things by placing his characters in an absurd reality where everyone talks like Frank Sinatra and adults stay out of the way.

The film is beautifully shot, existing mostly in a dull pre-rainfall greyness. But the best part of Brick is its tough as nails dialogue straight out of the 40s. With lines like, “I fed you Jer to see him eaten, not to see you fed,” Johnson’s script walks the line between cliché and genius.

The characters in Brick are high school kids by age only, the issues the film deals with, aside from the central murder story, are as heavy and adult as they can get, making it all the more interesting watching the drama unfold.

Will you see Brick’s twists coming? Probably, if you look. However, it is engaging enough you might not find your mind racing ahead of Brendan to solve the mystery.

Brick is a showcase of Gordon-Levitt’s abilities, long before Inception or (500) Days of Summer, though he is almost equalled by Lukas Haas, who plays the King Pin, a local drug dealer and the Moriarty to Gordon-Levitt’s Sherlock.

The music in Brick, much like its dialogue, is heavily inspired by the stylings of the 40s.

SCORE: 8/10

ACTING: 9/10

EFFECTS/VISUAL: 8/10

WRITING: 9/10

DIRECTING: 9/10

OVERALL: 43/50

TAKE AWAY THOUGHT: Brick flew under a lot of people’s radar, though I would highly recommend this to anyone who is a fan of detective movies. I would also highly recommend this to anyone who got a kick out of the video game, L.A. Noir.