When a film is advertised as having won a Sundance Festival award for ‘Originality of Vision’, one wonders what that could actually mean.  This time it refers to the ingenuity of the writer-director, Rian Johnson, to combine the style and contents of traditional film noir thrillers with a high school setting where audiences tend to expect silly shenanigans.

Brick is certainly a clever film and very well-crafted.  This is even more of an achievement when one hears how difficult it was to raise the money, how it was a six year task, how family and friends helped out with finances and with technical expertise.  It is filmed in San Clemente, California, the director’s home town and even uses the local high school.

Audiences don’t expect to be mentally challenged by your average high school comedy, so they may find this narrative difficult to get to grips with.  It shifts in time, often uses high school slang in the dialogue, makes it difficult to work out sometimes who is who (and why is why!).  But, for devotees of the noir tradition, it is well worthwhile.

Brick refers to a solid cake of drugs – in this case, one of a consignment that is stolen, contaminated, returned and has deadly effects on those who try it.

The private eye equivalent is a student called Brendan whose girlfriend mysteriously gets in touch with him, is afraid, and turns up dead in a stormwater channel.  Brendan uses his wits and his connections to try to unravel what has gone on.  He has a slacker friend called Brain who leads him to various addicts amongst the young people.  It also leads him to some dealers and thugs, including a lug called Tugger and a rich girl called Laura.  This in turn leads to a late 20s dealer, crippled, with a cane (like Sidney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon), called Pin who deals from his basement office in his fussing mother’s home.

But, this is all deadly serious.  Pin (Lukas Haas) has a violent entourage.  Finally, this all gets out of hand and there is a shootout.  Meanwhile the vice principal of the school (Richard Roundtree) is trying to investigate the drug dealings.

Brendan is played by Joseph Gordon Leavit (Three Rocks from the Sun, Mysterious Skin).  He is the strong, silent type but with a way with words.  He is cool, even when he is being bashed.  He is fearless and independent.  And, confronting the villains at the end, he walks away after giving a helpful summary of what has gone on.

At times tantalising, at times obscure, but always interestingly cinematic.

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