Brick

Joseph Gordon-Leavitt in Brick

Rian Johnson's Brick, an uneven attempt to shoehorn noir conventions into a high school flick, still ranks as one of the most promising American directorial debuts of the 21st century. The uneven nature of the film is primarily due to the stylized script which tries updating the hard boiled dialogue of Hammett and Chandler. Johnson's dialogue is interesting, but hard to present in a contemporary setting without descending to parody. Most of the cast is up to the challenge, particularly Joseph Gordon Leavitt who shoulders most of the acting load as Johnson's rumpled and bruised shamus. 

Johnson, though, has problems with his distaff characters. The women in Brick are underwritten stock characters and Johnson poses them to convey single emotions: dread, bitchiness, venality, etc. Since the narrative is presented through the mind and experiences of Johnson main character, this shortcoming is not fatal to the movie. However, a noir needs an effective femme fatale and Nora Zehetner's portrayal here doesn't have the impact of Jane Greer in Out of the Past, Marie Windsor in The Killing or Kathleen Turner in Body Heat. 

It's not as if Johnson doesn't try with Zehetner's character. He provides her with a musical set piece as provocative as Howard Hawks did for Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not. The detective has been invited to a costume party put on by the high school artsy clique. He slumps in to see Zehetner dressed to the nines like a 30s moll sitting at a piano warbling Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Sun, Whose Rays Are All Ablaze"; a most gorgeous melody. Except Nora Zehetner can't sing and doesn't try. She goes through a verse of the song in sprechstimme and the effect is more curious than striking. What is Johnson doing, tipping his hat to Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy? Beats me, but I enjoy the sense of quest I get from him. 

Zehetner by no means gives a bad performance, she just doesn't seem assured enough to give her characters that extra bit of oomph. The male performers have more to work with and Richard Roundtree, Noah Segan, and Lukas Haas all register amidst a seedy SoCal backdrop. Johnson stresses the alienation and anomie of San Clemente. Instead of a suburban Eden, the town looks brown and covered in concrete, like the back of the 7/11 the stoners hang out at. The high school is a crumbling, mall-like structure, anonymous and sterile. It does not seem accidental that the site of two killings is a concrete culvert that leads to darkness.

Johnson successfully conveys visually the emotional state of his protagonist. He is not afraid to summon an array of cinematic effects to heighten violent encounters or impart an air of regret to the memories of his driven dick. Brick, from 2005, is not a flawless film, but it is a felt one. (8/11/16)