Brick [HD]

"There's not much chance of coming out clean..."
I have to say it, "Brick" is probably the best movie I have seen this year so far, and I don't think I'll see another that will top it. I had heard about "Brick" for a while now, and when I heard the premise of it, I knew that it was something that I would have to check out. I'm glad I did, because not only did I end up enjoying it the first time I saw it, but I watched it again the next day. Not many films can do that for me, but this one most certainly did. There was no way I could have ever bet that I would've ended up loving this movie the way I do.

If you're unfamiliar with the approach to the movie, it's pretty much a detective-murder-whodunit movie with a catch; it's set in modern times and it involves high school kids. Yet, the kids talk in the manner that you would expect from your typical hard-boiled detective movie. The story concerns Brendan Frye, who is contacted by his ex-girlfriend by phone. On the phone, she sounds frightened and troubled, but doesn't...

"Come to see the show?"
Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars in "Brick" as Brendan, a high school student searching for his ex-girlfriend, Emily. After they broke up, Emily started "eating lunch" with a more popular, yet mysterious crowd ("The Upper-Crust"). As he delves into their world, he finds a sickening subculture of drugs, double-crosses, and worse.

The movie is set in Orange County (San Clemente), and the movie's big hook is that it's an update of those terrific film noirs of the 1940s and 1950s. Yes, the movie sometimes comes across as "The O.C." mixed with "The Lady from Shanghai," with just a touch of "Blue Velvet." However, as such, "Brick" succeeds very well. The dialogue is full of clever pithy lines and slang that went out with Eisenhower (Beautiful woman: Do you trust me now? Brendan: Less than when I didn't trust you before.). The directing is also terrific - kudos to first time director Rian Johnson. Finally, Jospeh Gordon-Levitt makes a likeable protagonist amidst the crazy...

"The Big Sleep" meets "The O.C."
Rian Johnson's "Brick" won a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Festival for originality of vision, and seldom has an award been more deserved. This witty, breathlessly entertaining low-budget flick conflates modern-day high-school angst with the mean-street conventions of 1940s detective fiction and movies. The surprise is that director/screenwriter Johnson plays the story absolutely straight, and gets away with it, while at the same time touching on some uncomfortable truths about growing up in America. Brendan Frye (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), whose delicate, poetic looks belie his limitless resources of toughness and courage, goes underground among his school's drug-addled "upper crust" to uncover the murderers of his ex-girlfriend Emily (Emilie de Ravin). He endures multiple beatings from the goon Tugger (Noah Fleiss), as well as threats from both The Pin (Lukas Haas), a cadaverous criminal mastermind who still lives with his doting mother, and Assistant Vice Principal Trueman...

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