"Brick" (2005) - Movie Review

There are some movies which definitely do not bore the audience but at the end of it, they get out with feeling nothing. Does it mean that the movie is not a good one? Is it bland? While it is arguable, “Brick” falls out in the hard line category of the above mentioned feeling of getting out from it with nothing but a stylishly different film. What makes this movie interesting is to never give the viewers the feeling of restless ness? The style of it is elegant and gauzy. The technicality and the screenplay makes the viewers sit throughout the movie without any problems.

The movie falls into the genre of film noir. The characters are strange and gloomy. They are a puzzle and also the clue forming the film style randomized and gritty. The movie starts of with a high school kid Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) staring at a girl lying motionless in front of a tunnel. The next shot takes the viewers two days back with the girl named Emily (Emile de Ravin) asking help from Brendan who is her ex-boyfriend. Brendan is curious on what is happening with her, since she looks and talks in the most depressing and concerned way. He starts his investigation of what is happening with her. With the sequence of events, the film comes back to the first shot. The movie then deals with how Brendan hunts down who is responsible for his loss.

The film does not offer the luxury of knowing the logic behind the actions. It is quite astonishing and depressing to see high school kids get into the most horrible places. The film is not a definitive messiah of solid contents but is a different kind of entertainer. The appreciation goes for the way the camera has been placed and garbled to get the best out of the little details. The images are crystal clear which is unusual since the chain of events is depressing and dubious. The way the movie takes its form through Brendan getting all geared up with his geeky yet resourceful friend Brain (Matt O’ Leary) is the first time I have witnessed a slow paced picture taking the seriousness on a totally weird and interesting manner.

The film is seemingly heroic and clichéd but the art of shaking things up, quite literally in the screen makes it watchable. The soundtrack brings the dark and disproportionate style of movie making as expected. As said earlier, editing is solid and stylishly shaky. It seems that most of the special effects shots were taken with real time camera shoots rather than computer graphics. It is quite surprising to see something like the editing style been done in the film without any computer edgy gimmicks. The movie screenplay is so dozed off and enjoyably lethargic. The viewers bite their nails in slow motion. The performance of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Matt O’ Leary stands out among rest of the cast. They are pale and unusually straight forward for the characters they have been given.

Apart from all these, “Brick” does not appeal as a solidly made movie with substance. It is a detective story set in a totally unexpected environment of high school. This is sometimes disturbing but yet the truth. The same story could have been said with any back drop but would have been normal. Hence director Rian Johnson chose the place where no one will try to take detective story, the high school. It is no denial that the movie did not bore me but at the same time it did not interest me in the end as well.