Movie: "Brick" (2005
by K G Kline
"The Maltese Falcon Jr."
For anyone who ever asked the question, what would "The Maltese Falcon" have looked like performed by high school students, the movie "Brick" (2005) has the answer. Filmed on a non-existent budget and released in only a few theaters, "Brick" stands out today as one of the most clever and original time-first films from any director.
Rian Johnson claims he got the idea for "Brick" reading Dashiell Hammett novels while in film school. That's no surprise. Film Noire never really goes away, though it sometimes lays dormant for long periods. In the last 20 years it's been popping up occasionally on NPR stations in radio dramas like "Blackjack Justice and Trixi Dixon Girl Detective". Not that those shows aren't well-written and fun, but they remain satire and not the real deal.
With "Brick", director Rian Johnson ("The Last Jedi", "Knives Out") was going for something much more faithful to the film noire classics of the 1940's. He would spend six years scraping together the money to film "Brick", and along the way gathered an ensemble of actors, designers, and producers who shared his dream, most of them working for little or no pay. In 2004 they finally pulled it off. With a budget of just $450,000 (enough for about three minutes of a Marvel movie) the crew filmed "Brick" in just 30 days using Johnson's actual high school as the film's primary setting. The end product is essentially a very polished student film that joins a short list of refreshingly original and entertaining first-time films like "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" and "Dark Star".
Joseph Gordon-Levitt ("Third Rock from the Sun") plays Brendan, a high-school outsider of his own making who walks around in an old grey jacket and worn-out shoes. Perpetually hunched over, he seems to be sending the message "stay away" to everyone around him. When Brendan's ex-girlfriend Em (Emillie de Ravin of "Lost") is found murdered at the mouth of a nearby drainage tunnel Brendan becomes a Sam Spade gumshoe, searching for clues to her death and who was responsible.
Rian Johnson uses students and neighborhood thugs for the rest of Hammett's classic character architypes. Brendan is the hard-boiled detective. Brain (16-year-old Matt O'Leary) is his faithful but reclusive informant. The Dames include Nora Zehetner as Lora, the fem fatale', and Meagan Good as Kara, the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold. Rian even managed to pull in two bigger names in Lucas Haas ("Witness") as The Pin (think The Fat Man), and Richard Roundtree as Assistant Vice Principal Truman (think the Assistant D.A.). Roundtree's far-too-brief scene in a school office is particularly noteworthy for its faithful reenactment of Sam Spade's many encounters with the police ("You give me some meat, or a fall guy, or you'll be the fall guy").
In fact, it's the dialog that really saves this film far more than the performances. Johnson never flinches or turns away from delivering straight-faced film noir lines pulled right out of 40's cinema. "I got all five senses and I slept last night. That puts me six up on the lot of you" Brandon says to a gang of deadbeat kids in a parking lot. The fact that these lines are coming out of the mouths of kids who weren't even born before Bogey died is the film's real novelty.
Johnson has claimed in interviews that he is never "winking" at the audience. I would disagree. He didn't have to dress The Pin like Barnabas Collins from "Dark Shadows" or put him in the back of a minivan with a table lamp, or place him and Brendon in his mother's 70's kitsch kitchen with a plate full of cookies. Johnson takes a few liberties and has a little fun with us now and then, but I wouldn't fault him for that since those are the film's only humorous moments, and it really needs them.
"Brick" isn't the first film to try putting kids into gumshoe settings. Allen Parker's "Bugsy Malone" (1976) did the same thing with a group of pre-teens (including Jodi Foster). It worked, but perhaps "Brick" works a little better because high school kids sound more comfortable talking about sex and drugs and knocking each other around. In the end "Brick" works because it never loses its novelty. It follows Hammitt's classic formula of never revealing too much or allowing the audience to realize there isn't much substance to the story. Like Hammitt's novels. "Brick" is just a bunch of characters that draw us in and keep us interested, even if in the end none of it really comes together.
Rian Johnson has commented on how working as a gorilla filmmaker with no budget forced him to be creative and inventive while filming "Brick". Since then Johnson has worked for Disney directing "The Last Jedi" and Netflics directing the "Knives Out" films. Those are two of Hollywood's most controlling studios. One has to wonder if working on films where someone is reviewing every shot, and making suggestions and changes daily, has made Johnson long for the 30 days he spent dragging a phone booth around San Clemente and stealing shopping carts to make "Brick" the way he wanted it.