REVIEW: Brick
Brick
Dir: Rian Johnson
Brick is writer Rian Johnson’s directorial debut. This fresh approach is reflected in the vigour of the film itself. The plot is concerns Brendon Frye, as he attempts to hunt down the murderer of his girlfriend Emily, but it twists the genre of the high school movie, adding in the mysterious essence of film noir. The film plays with the disjunction between these two genres effectively.
Brick is the source of parody in arch villain The Pin who receives his minions in the regal manner of Don Corleone, but is a sickly school kid who lives at home with his cookie baking, all-American mom. But it is also the source of striking social comment in the school’s Vice Principal who is forced into using the same bribing and blackmailing techniques as the criminals that are infesting his school.
Brendon is an unlikely hero: a socially excluded, bespectacled teen full of witty quips and, at times, painfully uncomfortable observations (such as his comment that his “eyes are like knives” after a sleepless night), but actor Joseph Gordon Levitt adds a believing vulnerability to his wise-cracking character. Meagan Good as Kara, the high school Queen Bee, has the diva attitude of Diana Ross and the make-up of a drag queen.
She is sufficiently scheming to be a character you can love to hate as she attempts to control Brendon and commands the various besotted schoolboys who gather — quite literally — at her feet, ready to carry out her every whim. A film at once real and surreal, Brick is deliciously cynical and eternally entertaining.
11th May 2006