A Detective Movie

Last March, a friend mentioned going to see the movie Brick and how excited he was about it, and then I promptly forgot all about it. Then, a few weeks ago, I was over at some friends' house, and they asked if we wanted to watch it. I vaguely remembered having heard of it before, but couldn't place where. After the first 10 minutes of the film, I wasn't convinced. The dialogue was really fast, I had no idea what anyone was talking about, and the star of the film was Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for pete's sake. I mean, this was the kid who starred in Third Rock from the Sun and 10 Things I Hate About You.

But then, I started to get into it. I loved the cinematography, which is noticeably minimalist in a film-noir style. The focus on the smoke from a single cigarette or the lack of extras populating the set creates a quiet brooding that underlies the tension of the plot.

And then, I realized that even though I didn't understand what was going on, that was the point. Brendan (Gordon-Levitt's character) doesn't know what's going on either, and the movie is a way for both him and the viewer to figure things out.

I think it helps that I enjoy traditional film noir to begin with. This film hints back to The Maltese Falcon; at one point, Brendan asks Laura to honk the horn four times--long, short, long, short--which is the same as the doorbell signal that Sam Spade gives Brigid O'Shaughnessey in The Maltese Falcon. And the fact that Brick takes the cinematography, dialogue, and plot of a traditional film noir and transports it to a high school in 2005 is, in my opinion, a stroke of genius. There are a few times when Rian Johnson really takes advantage of this and self-reflexively pokes fun at the movie, such as the scene where Brendan sits in the drug-kingpin's mother's kitchen, drinking orange juice next to a ceramic rooster. Excellent.

So, if you have the patience to get into it, this movie is well worth watching. The cinematography is beautiful, the plot is interesting, and the acting is well-done. I was particularly impressed with how different Gordon-Levitt was from everything else I'd seen him in. And leaving several situations ambiguous at the end was the perfect way to end the film, leaving me still thinking about what exactly happened.