Brick Review

Thesis: Brick is an excellent noir film, proving that the essence of script’s genre relies solely on the characters intentions, and not their predisposed circumstances.  

This is a bold these.  But I will defend it.

Typically, noir films are presented through more mature characters, characters that are belived to be more developed through life’s natural struggles.  Pure examples are Blood Simple, Chinatown, and Body Heat.  Noirs create, arguably the BEST, but objectively, excellent and enticing film experience, as long as they are done appropriately.  AND the appropriate way to create a noir is to focus on the downward spiral of a the main character, struggling with presented probelms and situation from a supporting cast.  Hideous character analysis, and always the point-of-view of a character (usually a detective/investigator) who digs deeper into a darker side of what comes off as an innocent location.  These elements create excellence subject studies, as they often react out of fear, desperation, and paranoia, presenting to the audience the conditions and results of commencing in progressively badd decisions, making the characters the most important quality of the film.

Why Brick is such a grand example of an effect noir script, is because of the focus of Brandon (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who relentlessly attempts to discover the murderer of his deceased ex-lover.  As the script presents, the details are extraordinarily complex, and unravel with the influence of subtle and alternative motives from each character, that ultimately leads to the grenade ending.  But regardless of the necessary ingredients in composing a great noir script, the unifying characteristic that really brings pop to this film over other noirs, is that it is a high school drama.  And it’s not a forced high school drama (depending on what kind of high school you attended).  There are relationships, jocks, loners, losers, inbetweeners, and a mutlitude of other high school demographs, which all get presented through Brandon’s perspective, as he’s relentlessly interviewing each demograph’s representative, even swinging deals with the principle.  Brick is an excellent noir, and won’t disappoint, regardless of the initial, teenage, high school impression that the script offers.

However, one area where the film does disappoint is the end scene.  As a noir film, it is essential to follow the slow downfall of the main character.  With Brandon, there is almost a a cathartic climax at the end, which does work, because the audience follows Brandon for so long, that they do with for poetic justice for the death of his ex-lover.  But it isn’t the formulaic ending that a noir filim requires.  Which, may work as effectively, because it isn’t formulaic.  However,  a better ending would have been to let Brandon get busted for the having his finger prints on the gun.  Just as the principle had warned Brandon, “if we find your prints, we’re going to pin it on you.”  A better ending would have been to let Brandon show the audience who the actual manipulator was, and then have Brandon take the fall because his finger prints were found on the gun in the final scene of aggression.

But, regardless of this personal alteration, Brick was still a heavy hitter, and I’d gladly watch it again.