Brick [WS]

Director: Rian Johnson Rian Johnson

Overview

A tough-talking teen attempts to uncover his ex-girlfriend's killer in director Rian Johnson's hard-boiled high-school noir, told in the style of a Dashiell Hammett mystery. An outsider by nature, Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is forced to penetrate the elaborate ranks of the high-school social scene and its more insidious underbelly when the body of his former girlfriend Emily is found lying lifeless in a remote creek. Though the pair had been on the outs, Brendan can't seem to shake the hysterical phone call that he received from Emily the day before her body was discovered, a call in which she rattled off a number of cryptic words: "brick," "pin," "tug," "poor Frisco." He's determined to find the guilty party, and to do that he'll need to uncover the meaning behind her enigmatic phone call. From the highest-ranking athlete to the lowest-level burnout, no one is above suspicion of leaving her in that creek or putting her in the position to end up there. Brendan's skill for getting the right attention from the right people leads him to a local drug dealer of urban-legendary status (Lukas Haas), who walks with a cane and lives with his mother. As Brendan infiltrates the social and political web more deeply, his theory solidifies and each player's role becomes clear, from the shifty-eyed pot slinger to an upper-crust innocent who may well be a femme fatale. Brendan may soon be ready to make his case, even if it's too late for him to get out.

Product Details

Release Date:	08/08/2006
UPC:	0025192866326
Original Release:	2005
Rating:	R
Source:	STUDIO DISTRIBUTION SERVS LLC
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Language:	English
Time:	1:50:00
Sales rank:	56,980

Special Features

Over 20 minutes of deleted and extended scenes; The inside track: casting the roles; Feature commentary by cast and filmmakers

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Joseph Gordon-Levitt	Brendan Frye
Lukas Haas	The Pin
Nora Zehetner	Laura Dannon
Noah Segan	Dode
Noah Fleiss	Tugger
Emilie de Ravin	Emily Kostach
Meagan Good	Kara
Richard Roundtree	Assistant VP Gary Trueman
Brian J. White	Brad Bramish
Jonathan Cauff	Biff
Reedy Gibbs	Pin's Mom
Tracy Wilcoxen	Straggler
Ari Velkom	Tangels
Cody Lightning	The Lug
McJoel Hamilton	The Pin's Driver
Matt O'Leary	The Brain
Lucas Babin	Big Stoner
Nathan Johnson	Composer

Technical Credits

Rian Johnson

Rian Johnson	Director,Screenwriter
Ram Bergman	Producer
Mark G. Mathis	Producer
Johnson Communications	Executive Producer
Norman Dreyfuss	Executive Producer
Craig Johnson	Executive Producer
Shannon Makhanian	Casting
Mark Mathis	Producer
Lisa Johnson	Executive Producer
Dennis Grzesik	Sound/Sound Designer
Jonathan Miller	Sound/Sound Designer
Marcie Campbell	Executive Producer

Editorial Reviews

A film noir that takes place at a high school sounds impossible to pull off. It smacks of a director mashing together disparate styles just to watch them clash. And yet, Brick transcends all of these trappings to become one of the best films in years. It might seem impossible, but only if you forget what the film noir approach really is. The style has become such a part of the historical lexicon, we start to characterize it through clichés, the superficial hallmarks that pop up in well-known examples. Soon we're defining it with the stereotyped voice-over narrative and pointlessly ambiguous dialogue that comedians employ when the audience calls out "film noir" on Whose Line Is It Anyway? But Brick goes to something much deeper; it relies on those well-worn artistic qualifiers only as they serve the story and all the characters in it, since they were all created in the noir world from the bottom up. What's far more fundamental to noir than its deadpan one-liners and femme fatales is the way it alludes to a dark, scary world that lurks just below the surface of the ordinary. Behind plain-looking streets, inscrutable men, and enigmatic women is a sinister web of deceit and betrayal, corruption and greed. Brick accomplishes this seamlessly, and makes the setting seem like a natural fit; the goings-on in high school can be just as arbitrary, complex, and potentially dangerous as drug-running or insurance fraud. The effortless use of rapid-fire slang -- a standard cinematic behavior both for 1930s gangsters and modern-day teenagers -- comes off as perfectly organic. The heroes of noir are flawed everymen, only smarter, quicker, and cooler, and leading actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt scores a home run in this role. His protagonist is bitingly intelligent and magnetically relatable, constantly prompting the audience to cheer him forward and fear for his peril. The real magic of film noir is how it subtly repaints its content, warping the frightening, brutal nature of the darkest human behavior and making it into something both dangerous and beautiful: the ultimate cool. The way Brick accomplishes this task is perhaps the most impressive of its feats. It avoids both gum-snapping trendiness and unreasonable characterizations, finding a middle ground where what you see is strange enough to draw you in but believable enough to keep you watching.