Brick

Rian Johnson, USA, 2005
3 out of 4 stars

I always thought of noir as a genre, but after watching this film and talking with my friend about it, I’m beginning to see that even (especially?) at its best, it’s really more of a formula. Chinatown seems to be the exception which proves the rule (or at least proves that noir doesn’t just have to be variations on a theme), but then again, some quite good films are made by introducing very unlikely or outrageous variations on said theme, such as The Big Lebowski.

The premise of this film is both fascinating and in danger of becoming old before you even see it. High school noir? Haven’t these people seen Veronica Mars? In fact, Brick tries to fit high school into noir, whereas Mars more successfully fits noir into high school. Certainly, a high school setting shouldn’t define a production, considering the wide varieties of quality and genre among films and shows which such settings. This wide variety, however, does lead one to wonder if setting anything in a high school is something to get that excited about. This is after all an “indie” film rather than a wide-release, mainstream piece, but it nonetheless comes off as a weird cross between a high-concept studio pitch and a film school experiment (you at least seem to need to know a bit about noir in order to get much out of it).

All this said, it’s a good film, if not entirely great or as clever as it’s meant to be. The very-stylized dialogue is nigh-impenetrable at the beginning, and it rubbed me the wrong way at first because I felt like someone was just showing off to me. Eventually I did get sucked in, but I’m not sure I was jolted in quite the way I was supposed to have been at the beginning there. The hero is engaging, if significantly less sympathetic than his predecessors. The plot is, well, formula, but the best feature, aside from the brief, kinetic fight sequences, is the sight of the noir formula transpiring in suburban homes and veritable wastelands. Noir usually takes place in Southern California, but this manages to be the least “glamorous” depiction of the usual noir landscape yet.

Source: Universal DVD
14 August, 10:29 PM