Brick was really good. I have to admit I went in expecting a cute gimmick movie — well, not cute. A noir gimmick, but you know what I mean. A movie that existed for the sake of the gimmick: noir high school. This was not what I got.
Yes, it’s a noir flick set at a high school. Strip away the high school and there’s nothing really new here. It’s pitch perfect; Rian Johnson gets the noir thing. The dialogue is tough, the characterizations are good, the fractured spinning loyalties are good. The subtle implications of perversity are good. If you grew the kids up and stuck the thing in Chicago or New York or LA, you’d have a competent but not surprising noir which would eventually show up in some classic noir boxed set or other, and people would say “Hey, it’s nice to see that one on DVD.”
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