paragiraffe

This weekend I saw Brick, the Joseph Gordon-Levitt indie film you’ve never heard of. The Cinefilmspotcasting guys both liked it, so I decided to check it out. (Also, it’s down to two showings here, so it’ll probably be gone next weekend. Also, I’m generally fascinated with high school films, especially dark ones.)

This movie is a high school film noir, a detective story. After a cryptic phone call from her, Brendan (Gordon-Levitt) begins investigating the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend, uncovering drugs and, well, drugs (which the title references). In this respect, the movie didn’t quite live up to the hype for me—I thought the story would be a little more interesting. However, Gordon-Levitt is really great as Brendan, so great you might not even recognize him. It’s appropriately gritty, both visually and the characters. The most interesting part of this movie is the dialogue; it sounds straight out of a black-and-white movie, yet you could completely see high schoolers of today saying some of this stuff, like “upper crust” (slang for the popular crowd).

I’d go with rental on this one. It has style but lacks real intrigue.

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