Crime noir is a genre that is very near and dear to my heart. I love the way that great noir paints the world in shades of grey. As though good never existed. As though we’ve ever only had varying degrees of evil and nothing more. I love the way the hero of a good noir story is often the only moral person in the whole affair. The way they’re beaten and broken after a complicated past. And usually, it’s the hero alone against the world. Fighting for a principle, a moral, or an ideal that everyone else has given up on. It seems melodramatic I know. But when it works, when it’s from the heart, it works on such a gut level that it resonates. Powerfully
Brick is great classic crime noir.
Brick is set in modern day southern California. It tells the story of Brendan, a loner who eats his lunch at the back of the school by the dumpsters. One day he gets a note in his locker from his ex-girlfriend asking him to call her. He does and finds out shes in trouble. Very serious trouble. But before she can tell him anything else she gets cut off. Thus begins Brendan’s quest to find the truth at all costs.
What carries Brick and makes it such an astounding film is it’s ability to take such classic noir concepts and place them so seamlessly into a modern world. Never does the film feel like a cheap attempt to play on adolescent problems. It never crosses that threshold into melodrama that films dealing with teenagers very often can. This is due in large part to some incredible performances from it’s young cast. Joseph Gordon Levitt, whom you may remember as the kid on Third Rock From the Sun, manages to make Brendan and his obsession with his ex-girlfriend believable. He never crosses that line into selfish brooding that could have very easily been the role’s downfall. The film has so many great performances, in fact, that to comment on and list them all would make this review novel length.
In the end, what makes Brick so great is that it manages to hit all the right buttons while being completely detached from everything we’ve come to associate with crime noir. There are no trench-coat wearing detectives. No nightclub running bad-guys wielding tommyguns. You’ll not see any black and white footage here. What you’re gonna get is a very heartfelt story about a high school student trying to find out what happened to his ex-girlfriend. A story about one kid against the rest of the world, fighting for a moral, a truth, and an idea that everyone else has given up on.
9/10
