Format: DVD from personal collection on rockin’ flatscreen.
This is the twelfth in a series of twelve movies selected by Chip Lary at Tips from Chip.
A few years ago when I had a podcast with Nick Jobe at YourFace, we ran the show in a series of seasons. The idea was that our guest would pick a genre of film, Nick would pick a film in the genre he knew that I hadn’t seen, and I would pick a film in the genre he hadn’t seen. At least that was how it worked in theory. We did film noir every season, and every time we did, Nick toyed with the idea of having me watch Brick. When a Half Price Books had a massive movie sale last year (I got more than 50 movies for $30), I bought Brick figuring that I’d get to it eventually.
That eventually turned out to be sometime this year, since Chip put it on my list of 12 movies. Since I owned it, Brick was my insurance—if there was a planned film I couldn’t get, I could always fall back on watching this. Fortunately, that was never necessary, so Brick turns out to be movie #12. It’s a movie I’ve heard about from a lot of people, which means that, essentially sight unseen, I’m going into this with some expectations.
Unlike a lot of films noir, Brick starts out deadly. Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) discovers his ex-girlfriend Emily (Emilie de Ravin) dead at the entrance of a tunnel. We flash back a couple of days and learn a few things. Emily was scared of someone. She mentions a few things that make no sense to Brendan: “bad brick,” “poor Frisco,” “Tug,” and “the Pin.” Brendan starts digging with the assistance of his friend Brain (Matt O’Leary, and no, that’s not a typo—the character is named Brain). What he discovers is a series of interconnected drug rings of pushers, users, muscle, and losers. Emily evidently fell in with a combination of those groups and it ended up getting her killed. Brendan takes it upon himself to discover what happened, doing his best to ferret out information from the various drug cliques and keep as much as he can from his high schools vice principal, Trueman (Richard Roundtree).
Yeah, all of this takes place in a high school. That’s really the part that most beggars my imagination here. I mean, I know that kids in high school do drugs and I know that sometimes it gets serious and even gets deadly, but this is street gang level violence and drug operations in what looks like a decent little suburb of something. In fact, it may simply be the incongruity of the level of violence and drug culture in an environment that seems its antithesis that makes the film work the way it does.
Essentially, Emily was playing a number of different angles, and all of this came about because the high school’s main pusher the Pin (short for kingpin and played by Lukas Haas, who is just barely recognizable as the kid from Witness) managed to score ten bricks of heroin. He sold off eight, and kept another, but the last one went missing. So, was Emily tied to that? Was Brendan’s other ex-girlfriend Kara (Meagan Good) involved? What about stoner Dode (Noah Segan)? Or the mysterious Laura (Nora Zehetner) who seems to be involved with everyone and know everything as well. And then there’s Tug (Noah Fleiss), the Pin’s muscle, who seems unable to do anything but give in to ‘roid rage.
I hate to say it, but Brick doesn’t quite live up to the hype. It would have been difficult for it to do so, since I’ve been hearing about it for the last three years. There’s something about it that doesn’t quite work for me. I’m not sure if it’s the overall attitude of the film or something about the characters, but there’s something that feels artificial about the story or the characters. I think it might be the dialog.
The dialog is interesting because it’s certainly reminiscent of classic noirs from the ‘40s and ‘50s. It seems strange coming out of the mouths of modern high school students, though. Brick comes off as emotionally cold in a sense because of this. Brendan’s quest to find out who really killed Emily seems to be less about wanting to avenge her and more about simply satisfying his curiosity. I have difficulty with the buy-in on that level, and so on that level, Brick fails for me.
But is it good? I think it is, despite none of the characters being very likable. Actually, Brain could’ve been used more. I do like the parallels to classic noirs. The missing brick of heroin is more or less the black bird from The Maltese Falcon, the McGuffin the drives the plot from place to place. If Brendan is essentially Sam Spade and the Pin is Gutman, that would make Tug the equivalent of Wilmer, Laura would be Brigid, and Brain the equivalent of Effie Perrine. Looked at that way, I respect the film a bit more.
Brick isn’t a bad film and I’d watch it again, but I think it will be some time before I dial it up again. I was too emotionally detached from it because I think it’s too emotionally detached from itself to really hit home for me.
Why to watch Brick: A solid neo-noir that taps into a good number of classics.
Why not to watch: It’s too cold to make a lot of impact.
