Brick

One of the reasons I started this blog was to talk about movies and music.  Somehow that mandate has slipped to the wayside, probably because of the shear quantity of movies that I watch and the fact that I can't seem to post something new more than once a week.  Well, let my try to rectify that a bit by telling you about a film I watched last night.

The movie is called Brick.  Its a film noir set in a modern high school.  And they play it absolutely straight.  These teenagers chew through scenes with dialog like "I've got all five of my senses and I slept last night which puts me six up on the lot of you" and relish it.  Occasionally an adult will drift through their world and have no idea that they are in a noir.  The parents offer their kids sandwiches like any normal parent, not realizing that as soon as they leave the room someone will say something like "Ask any dope rat where their junk sprang and they'll say they scraped it from that who scored it from this who bought it off so and after four or five connections the list always ends with the Pin."

Somehow the writer mapped every character you'd recognize from high school into a comparable character from a Raymond Chandler novel.  The femme fatale is the star of drama class.  The too-smart-for-his-own-good sidekick is a study hall geek.  The tough guys are all jocks.  The underlord of the crime world is the local drug dealer.  The hard-ass police commissioner is the vice principal (VP).

And who is the hard nosed dick who pushes too hard with the wrong questions?  Joseph Gordon-Levitt, best know as Tommy from Third Rock from the Sun.  He's the already-jaded-at-17 guy who thinks he's smarter and better than everyone at school.  The guy who has something on everybody even though he doesn't have any real friends.  The guy who can even push the teachers around if he needs too.  That may be why I like this movie so much.  I think I was that guy once.

The movie delves into murder and drug deals, sex and intrigue, all the things you would expect from a film noir except played out by teenagers.  And they somehow found the pitch perfect notes to hit.  This is a movie that could have . . .should have been absolutely ridiculous.  But it's not.  It is hands down the coolest movie I've watched in a long time and I can't recommend it highly enough.