Brick

I have to admire writer and director Rian Johnson. He was a film school grad with no connections who had the audacious idea to set a hard-boiled detective story in a high school, and then scraped together the financing so that the movie was made, his vision intact. Therefore it is with no pleasure that I found his film at times painful to watch. It just didn't work for me.

Johnson, inspired by the works (and the film adaptations) of writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, set out to make a noir film, but didn't want to set it fifty years ago, with men wearing fedoras and sitting behind desks in private eye offices. As he rightly notes, this has become fodder for parody. So he set his film Brick in a contemporary high school, but he kept the language of noir. This is akin to a modern-dress production of Shakespeare, which can work. The big difference--Shakespeare is timeless poetry, the language of noir (particularly in Johnson's hands) is not, and instantly dated.

I think this film could have worked had the language been updated. Hearing high school kids refer to cops as "bulls," and other cliches from the forties, just made me think of Bogart's line in The Maltese Falcon, "The cheaper the hood the gaudier the patter." He was referring to Elisha Cook, Jr. as Wilmer, a kid acting all grown up, which is what Brick is in spades. Having such young actors spout noir patter, no matter the skill of the actors, is somewhat like watching Bugsy Malone, and is unintentionally funny.

There are some good actors here. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is our hero, and coupling this film with Mysterious Skin, he has completely left behind his sit-com roots. Nora Zehetner is the femme fatale in the piece, and she looks like the offspring of Alicia Silverstone and Audrey Tatou, and does her best to keep her role from careening into parody. Less successful is Lukas Haas as The Pin, the local drug dealer, who is forced to wear a cape, carry a cane, and wear orthopedic shoes. Talk about an uphill climb. Emily DeRavin, who is now playing Claire on Lost, is the girl who gets into trouble and sets the plot in motion.

So, great marks for originality for Brick, but the execution was faulty. I will still be interested in whatever Johnson does next.