MoFo MC August: Brick

The thrill of that other world, the one where a flicker of light is a bad omen and the adventure decays with the scent of crime and women, is what drives people to noir. Its gravitas is blotched with surreal airs and pace, yet the sinister humor is never out of place. Retribution is the action and reaction, one band keeps it more straight, more shrewd, but neither comes out on top.



With Brick it's different and yet the same, but I'll avoid a synopsis as this isn't a review. Back when the genre began and flourished, pure black and white became and remained the standard, characters were age appropriate, and the themes were culturally relevant (usually), however more recent noirs (70s onward) are especially displaced and come off dated. Rian Johnson ties his influences close to the classic era, somewhat like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, except Brick is much more of a noir. In high school.

Brendan Frye: No more of these informal chats! If you have a disciplinary issue with me, write me up or suspend me and I'll see you at the Parent-Teacher conference.

Even though the ages are 18-25, the setting is in the most pretentiously immature era of many persons' lives, and it's filmed in color, Brick is just as dangerous as the oldies, but in its own way, as it would have to be. The humor is very different, moreso for the 90s generation, and the combination of the old school film technique, slang use, and sound effects with relevant ironic humor (kingpin's mother fixing up some apple juice for their meeting) paints things clever.



First of all, does anyone not consider this a true noir? Which differences between this era and the first era are better or worse? What has maintained, for better or worse? How many references can you count? Why is the Pin's foot bigger than the other?

Oh Brick...such a good movie... I'll watch it again this week and comment. Although I have seen it about 6 times already...just not recently.

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This is one of my all-time favorites. Excited to see what people have to say about it. I'll check back in soon...

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I've heard about this film, but I've never seen it. So I popped it in for the MC.

I'm going to be one of the dissenters. Although transposing the neo-noir into a high school, gains a little originality, it loses an awful lot of believably which took me out of the film.

The young woman's death established a wonderful idea of fragility. But destroys this same idea by having Brendan duke it out with every jock and drug dealer in town. It kind of gives him a super human ability to take punches and bullets in some kind of bizarre cartoon universe. "When you're in trouble, when mayhem's all around. Who do you call? Punching bag man!"

Other absurdities: the casting is way off. I assumed from the actors that this was a small college campus, until a Vice-Principal showed up and established this was a grade school.

The absence of on-screen cops and detectives is also a misstep. I don't know how well after school detention works as a deterrent for murder, but I'll probably say unequivocally that every murderer would prefer to be held back for a couple of hours after class, as opposed to life imprisonment.

The top "clique" is so removed from the ordinary kids, even their communications are encrypted.

In order to gain more time to investigate, Brendham moves and hides her body. Isn't that a crime? Tampering with evidence?

This is ultimately a big fail.

This is going to be an interesting thread...

Ah, exciting.

I felt throughout watching that the film was self-aware of its genre, for example the sequence of Tug sitting comfortably in that chair, cut to Brendan with quick, comic-like footsteps, punch, footsteps, cut back to Tug in the same position. It is absurd, I agree with you, however I see it as being purposeful and amusing instead is bemusing. As far as Brendan taking punches, can you name any movie that uses violence ultra realistically? Here it's not too far from it, and they do address that he swallowed too much blood, so I'm not seeing that complaint as noteworthy.

Not every film with a missing person has to show cops. I have no idea what you're saying after that.

Part of the absurdity, plus it gives a way to add that jazzy aura.

...Yeah?

I'll watch it again soon and pop back in, but I'll start by saying: yeah, they're removed from ordinary kids. It's a noir transplanted into high school. Any criticism based on realism is basically an admission that you're not willing to take the film as it presents itself. Which you kind of have to do, for this and lots of other films.

Before participating in the discussion, I'll post my review of Brick here. You are all, of course, welcome to discuss the things I've mentioned in my review.


Brick (2005)

What debutant director Rian Johnson did with Brick isn’t easy. He took the conventions of classic film noir and dropped those in the current day high-school environment. That sounds like a bad idea. Last time someone tried to pull off something remotely similar, it didn’t end very well… at all (Cruel Intentions – Dangerous Liaisons). But I’ll be damned if Johnson didn’t execute his daring idea to perfection. Brick is an inspired, stylish detective film that slightly distorted a familiar genre to revitalize it.


Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Brendan Frye, who is somewhat of a loner on a high-school in South-California. His only friend is the hyper-intelligent Brain. One day, Brendan gets a phone call from his ex-girlfriend Emily, who he hasn’t seen in 3 months. Brendan can barely make sense of her incoherent ravings, but a few days later he finds Emily’s corpse under a bridge. He decides to search for the culprit(s) and subsequently ends up in the high-school drug world, led by the sinister Pin.

The average age of the characters here is 18 or 19, but it rarely happens that a reference is made to this. Everyone in Brick is part of a well-organized criminal organization or is tracking it down. There’s drug-trafficking, rape and murder while a lone wolf tries to clear a way through a web of intrigues. It really is a hardball PI film that is placed in a high-school setting. This is the most apparent in the dialogue, which is very reminiscent of The Maltese Falcon and Miller’s Crossing. Unlike the usual teenage lexicon, there’s no “like” or “whatever” in Brick. These kids are the most sharp-minded brats I’ve ever seen on a screen.


This merge of the classic noir film and a modern day high school film is of course very contradictory. And it is exactly that contradiction that Brick floats on. Everything about this film – the story, the characters, the dialogue – seem to be taken directly from a traditional PI flick, but it takes place in a high school. Brick does in fact go to great lengths to conserve the atmosphere of the classic noir films. As I mentioned above, Brick takes place in today’s world, but the characters continuously make use of phone booths instead of mobile phones. In fact, lots of technology that wasn’t yet invented or widely available in the 40s is avoided: there are no computers, the cars seem a bit timeless (no emphatically modern cars) and even the character’s clothes are designed to make them look timeless. The characters always wear black, white and grey; any types of trendy styles are avoided. Brick attempts to at all cost to make you think you’re caught in a time warp where the 40s and 00s coincide, much like the private eye world of Sam Spade and the school world of Brendan Frye do.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt became known through the sitcom Third Rock From The Sun and already prove his worth in the terrific Mysterious Skin. In Brick, he confirms his great potential. Brick could’ve easily silted up in unintentional humor if the actors hadn’t been able to rise above their age. Luckily, they do. Grodon-Levitt lends a certain gravitas to Brendan, an impression of intelligence and world-wiseness (is that a word?) that stretches beyond his young age.

Brick is a very clever, well-constructed ode to a genre that is nigh extinct. I’ve read skeptics’ opinions who believe that the picture is too dependent on a gimmick and that beneath the mechanisms of the plot, it doesn’t really have a beating heart. Of course, with those kinds of platitudes, you can criticize every experiment. The question how interesting the result of such an experiment is, is much more important. And the result of Brick is nothing less than fascinating.

This is especially noteworthy, good eye.

I do recall The Pin saying,

"I'll call you if whatever."

Love your review, Brodinski!!

It returns to plausibility. By eliminating the adult world, it restricts the story to a strange high school world where murder and drug dealing is a common concurrence and thus, if a student is caught in these illicit endeavors, would merit a detention or a maybe even harshly worded disciplinary letter, but it ultimately doesn't concern the larger adult (and real) world, this diminishes the credibility of the story.

A young woman's disappearance from high school doesn't immediately launch an all-out man hunt diminishes the victim (like she's so worthless, no one cares about her except for a single person) again this diminishes the story.


I didn't have a problem with the violence, I had a problem with the logic of the violence. Nothing of Brendan's back story established he had a black belt in karate, he was presented just as a normal kid. He should have used his wits against them rather than his fists. The brawn: Brad (the football jock) and Tugger (muscle for Pin) are established as physically menacing. It's not hard to imagine them throttling someone to the ground with one punch in a movie or in real life. However, the movie immediately destroys that premise by having Brendan fight it out with them with little or no consequence. Brad's story line about whining about not getting enough game time is essentially telling the audience that Brendan will best him in a fight simply because he's animated by "noble" reasons and Brad is merely a vain poser.

On a side note: ultra realistic violence would be the scene where someone bashes someone over the head with a wine bottle and that person immediately collapses to the floor with a bleeding concussion. Then the shocked look on the other guy's face when he realizes wine bottles don't break away in real life the way they do in the movies.

As avid movie goers, suspension of disbelief isn't quite the difficult trick it's made out to be. A talking dog? No problem. Women's clothing just seems to fall off them whenever you're around? (I'm talking to you, Patrick Steward) No problem. A high school kid becomes Sam Spade? No problem. But you have to imagine yourself an ATM (Automated Trust Machine) and I just thought that Brick asked for too many withdraws while setting up the story.

I'll have to re-watch it, but I remember liking Brick on the first viewing. I'll come back with my thoughts.

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"George, this is a little too much for me. Escaped convicts, fugitive sex... I've got a cockfight to focus on."

There was two murders by one person, doesn't count as a common occurrence. Drug dealing is EXTREMELY common in high school. No one was caught...

It wasn't an all-out manhunt, one person was looking for one person.

He did use his wits, hence how he is likened to a detective. Also show me one part of the film where any of the punches aren't random brute force, of which anyone with will power can exert. There was no martial arts. The consequence was him swallowing too much blood and almost dying. This is true but not a con.

Did you just make up an acronym as a defense? Oh well, we have one person against, who else?

I'm afraid I'm with thracian on the "fail" side of the fence. I really expected to like it; the synopsis was intriguing and I really like JGL, but I found it to be pretty dull, to be honest.

I think it's bloody brilliant.

I can understand the appeal, it just didn't resonate with me at all. Maybe it needs a re-watch.

What didn't you like?

Gonna catch this again tomorrow, most likely. But for now, the Movie Club page has been all prettified.

LOVE Brick. I think it's a fantastic debut from, Johnson. I remember just liking the notion of it when reading the review for it about 5 years back, and upon watching it, I thought that the genre mix between the familiar thropes of film noir and teenage angst was incredibly well done and like somebody else said, the fact that the film is self aware makes the combo less gimmick, more magic.

Hmm, not sure why you had a problem there, mate. I don't think it's especially important that the film established Brendan as black belt in kung fu or whatever and they didn't really have to, I think. It's not like they made him out to be a badass. Brendan gets his ass handed to him quite a few times. I think the film does a decent job in making him out to be fearless and that his love for the dead lass is driving him the way, other dead femme fatales drive detectives into solving murders. Brendan is simply a (young) man on a mission and he cares very little about the consequences of confronting the dodgy geezers who are linked to the the disappearance of his ex girlfriend.

Gonna watch this mother tonight and come back with more thoughts.

I feel that, like a few other modern American noir revivals, this one doesn't really work. The gimmick is not terribly handled, but it never gets to the point where the blending feels at all inspired or natural or finds anything truly new. And of course, platitudinous though it may sound, the film does not go beneath or beyond its gimmick. There's not a lot of memorable stuff here, it's just delivered in a fairly unusual way. And that delivery is (understandably) not realistic (I guess films noir never were, but it's easier to imagine people speaking and acting like that many years ago than it is to suspend disbelief in them doing so now); this artificiality would be forgivable if there was much wit, dexterity or insight in the script, which there isn't. It seems that the makers were happy with the superficial concept and never had the talent or industriousness to build it out into a really good film.

There's enough style and good acting to mean it isn't totally without interest, but there are so many much more interesting and enjoyable failures than this. There's not even enough here to convince me that high school movie + noir is really a particularly potential-rich idea (not all unusual combinations are good ones).