Loyola Greyhound

Issue date: 2/5/08 Section: Arts & Society

Media Credit: MCT campus Emile De Ravin co-stars as Emily, the ex-girlfriend of Brendan who is found dead in a storm drain.

Film Noir is all about the seedy; the underground world of crime and the protagonist who is consumed into this world by his own curiosity.

In "Brick", this underbelly of society is a California high school whose student population is cesspool of criminal activity. Such activity that becomes more and more twisted with each new social circle we encounter.

The film starts with Brendan (Joseph Gordon Levitt of "10 Things I Hate About You"), a tough and yet stringy high school student. From behind his wire-rimmed glasses he shockingly sees the dead body of his ex-girlfriend, Emily (Emile De Ravin of "Lost") lying in a storm drain -- an ex-girlfriend who he is still obsessively in love with.

Then the film jumps back to two days prior as Brendan receives a frantic phone call from Emily saying that she is in a load of trouble. In her panic she is able to tell Brendan four words that transform into the high school detective's best clues: brick, pin, and tug. From this moment on and continuing after her death, he turns his life into an investigation of what happened to Emily. In this time we find out just how twisted high school can be.

He uses the knowledge of the all-knowing, rubix-cube wielding, "The Brian" (Matt O'Leary) to unlock the meaning of the words in order to dig his way through the many social layers of high school to get to the ominous "pin".

Without giving too much away, the "pin", is the drug-dealer with a brain ("The Darwin Awards" actor Lukas Haas), whose army of followers stretches from the drama queens, to the football team, the rich kids, and understandably the school thugs. None of these characters deter the ever-clever Brendan as he forcefully infiltrates the system in order to find out the who and what that led Emily to die.

The idea of a modern film noir tale set in high school may sound a bit too much like a half-baked attempt at a throwback to classic Hollywood. Rather than suffering that fate, "Brick", deftly harkens back to the character traits of "Double Indemnity" and the "Maltese Falcon" while modernizing and reinventing the genre for the Y2K teenage set.

The dialogue is a quick-witted, fast-talking lingo dripping with both ambiguity and insight all at once. Those words propel the plot that has more twists than even the most-experienced whodunit audience member could ever expect. It is one of those films that ensnares you from opening scene to end credits and leaves you wanting to press play again so that you can pick up on more clues and quips.

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