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What’s the Buzz: I Think You Should Leave, Brick, and More!

Brick (2005)

Hal: Despite its postmodern, ironic setting, Brick is not only a surprisingly sincere piece of film noir, it may actually be my all time favourite film noir. It manages to work on multiple unexpected levels, shifting from an ironic to a sincere engagement with its own story and universe in a way that effortlessly bring the viewer along for the ride. Aside from the fact the characters are all in high-school, it’s played almost entirely straight, with only a couple of scenes where the kids interact with adults that deftly break the spell for comic effect. You become so absorbed in the film’s world that by the time Shaft himself (Richard Roundtree) turns up as the vice-principal and chews out our adolescent antihero like he’s a rogue detective, it’s a jarringly hilarious reminder of how seriously the film has managed to make you take it. It’s a very funny film that happens to have an extremely tortured protagonist.

That protagonist is Brendan Frye (a career best Joseph Gordon-Levitt), an effortlessly cool high-school outsider whose ex-girlfriend disappears and who sets out to bring down those responsible, whatever the cost. I can hardly overestimate how good Gordon-Levitt is in this role. If I were casting a live action Cowboy Bebop, he’d be my guy for Spike and this movie is the reason. Brendan is a terrific character, alternately laconic and loquacious, determined and unafraid, playing four dimensional chess with people despite knowing he can’t really see the board. He’s everything a noir antihero should be: pursuing a lost love, he’s outwardly jovial and hard-nosed but inwardly scrunched up in pain like a returned love letter.

Everyone else is phenomenal as well. Noah Fleiss is a fantastic heavy, alternately hilarious yet legitimately intimidating, Lukas Haas is fabulous as the mysterious ‘the Pin’, and Nora Zehetner brings charm and vulnerability as the femme fatale at the film’s centre. Despite their outwardly stock roles, the quality of the writing and the performances ensures every part has a sense of hidden depth slowly being peeled back, with still waters running deep through every key character.

Even at this early stage in his career, Rian Johnson feels like the complete package. The script is replete with wonderfully in character dialogue that perfectly captures the hard-boiled energy of the classic noirs, while capturing a sense of pathos and emotional depth that often eluded its forebears. There’s some brilliantly creative sequences like a foot-chase that displays some fantastic use of sound, and the score itself by Nathan Johnson is brilliant, I particularly love Emily’s plaintive and melancholy love theme. The construction of these sequences is helped no end by Johnson’s fantastic editing and by the tightly clipped cinematography of Steve Yedlin, still Johnson’s primary director of photography.

There’s so many inspired details that add extra layers of humour and atmosphere to the film, it’s incredible what Johnson and company managed to achieve with a less than half a million dollar budget. Like Knives Out and The Last Jedi, it presents itself as a reinvention of its genre but plays out more as a rejuvenation, managing to keep everything audiences love about them, while delivering something that feels entirely fresh and unique, managing to work on levels one hadn’t even considered before.

Those are our recommendations this week! What are yours? Let us know in the comments!

Written by TV Obsessive

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