"Brick" is completely lacking in any sort of believability or even plausibility, and even if you pretend that it takes place in an alternate universe where everybody speaks 'stylized' as opposed to English, the dialogue sounds silly and ridiculous spoken by typical high school kids. I can buy this sort of stylized dialogue if spoken by gangsters and private detectives, but high school kids? Even in a fantasy universe the characters have to be believable but in this case the characters, their motives, their lives (lifestyles, more like), their way of speaking, and their mannerisms completely lack believability or plausibility and while I SHOULD be invested in the outcome of the film's events I simply cannot be because I'm reminded over and over again that these characters aren't plausible.
"Brick" is original in the sense that there are no other stylized neo-noir films set in high school, but it lacks originality in all other areas. Rian Johnson's (who is clearly, based on this film, a very talented director) direction is almost too inspired by classic noir for the film to work in its own right. It's certainly pretty to look at, and quite well-paced, but it's far too concerned with being an homage to bother with feeling genuine. The same could be said of the plot, characters, and dialogue, which are all so 'inspired' by Raymond Chandler and countless other sources that they seem far more interested in packing in homage after allusion after homage after allusion than telling a story. The story itself is mildly interesting, and some of the plot twists and turns got an 'ooh' out of me, but the whole thing feels completely phony and soulless. The sort of thing that would have been fun as a 10-minute short for film class, but is incredibly frustrating as a feature.
The acting is good from everybody involved, and Rian Johnson's shot composition is excellent, as well as the cinematography by Steve Yedlin and the score by Nathan Johnson. The script is outrageously silly and over-the-top, but at least the film is nice to look at.
A noir story in a high school setting is a reasonable idea, and this film could have been quite good, but instead of working in all the staples of a noir Johnson instead goes all out and makes something so frustratingly derivative and intensely stylized that it doesn't for a second feel plausible. No, I'm not looking for realism here, just some form of plausibility and believability. Do you question the world of "Star Wars"? Do you question the persistently stylized dialogue in classic noir films? No, of course you don't, because they feel genuine. Above everything else, "Brick" is completely phony. Not a second feels real, and by the tenth time Joseph Gordon-Levitt attempted a Marlowe routine I was already shaking my head in disbelief at the waste of talent this film was. It's so phony and so gimmicky that it becomes genuinely hard to sit through.
4/10
