ViewGuide

Created Oct 27, 2012 11:15PM PST • Edited Dec 22, 2013 08:55PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Very Good 3.5

   What we have here is a hard-boiled High School movie. Students in and around an underground drug ring allow Brick to revel in deceit and ironic detachment. Rian Johnson’s first movie then leavens itself through Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s romantic heroism.

   So what if JGL is mid-twenties posing as a teenager, a substitute for a younger guy as it were.

   We’re talking Very Entertaining Movie here.

   Brick marks the first pairing of star writer-director Rian Johnson with star star Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Viewing it makes clear why the Star wanted to work with the Director again and why Looper’s current success is no fluke.

   Just this side of LOL and arch throughout, Brick finally scores a belly laugh by ringing a bell, er, a can.

   The absurdly complex plot – complete with often impenetrable dialog – brings The Big Sleep to mind.

   The Big Sleep goes to High School it is.

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s understated performance as an ultra-cool highschooler is quite effective and increasingly charismatic. Having just seen him in Looper, he looks very young in Brick from seven years earlier.

   The rest of the cast is competent if not tremendous.

   • Nora Zehetner as a very pretty femme fatale, even appearing in a lady-in-red dress to flesh out the role.
   • Lukas Haas jumps off the screen as a creepily controlling kingpin.
   • Noah Fleiss also makes a solid impression as a hotheaded henchman.
   • Matt O’Leary as a cool brainiac.
   • Emilie de Ravin as a girl lost in a drugged-out fog.
   • Noah Segan disappoints as an evil drug dealer.

   And hey, isn’t that the legendary Richard Roundtree as the Assistant V.P.? Yes, yes it is.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Good 3.0

7. Female Costars OK 2.5

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Very Good 3.5

    Opens brilliantly, with a traumatized guy viewing a corpse wearing three blue bracelets, then cuts to a flashback of that same arm – same blue bracelets – slipping a note into a locker. And we’re hooked.

    Tragically hip and studded with great lines like “put that body to bed.” Now that’s a putdown.

11. Direction Great 4.0

12. Play Very Good 3.5

    Moments of perfect dialog are interspersed with passages so convoluted as to be unintelligible.

    Head-scratching title even though we learn what it is.

13. Music Very Good 3.5

    Nice tinkly piano.

14. Visuals Great 4.0

    Filmed in San Clemente and at San Clemente High – quintessential suburban California.

    Thanks to Ailera Stone’s Secret Labyrinth for the picture of JGL & Nora Zehetner.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 3.3

    Well sordid. Hide virgin eyes.

17. Sex Titillating 2.5

18. Violence Savage 3.6

19. Rudeness Nasty 3.7

21. Reality

    Surreal 2.6

    High School surrealism.

    • No parents, no classes, no teachers, no limits = Surreal CircoReality
    • JGL taking punch after punch without ever breaking a jaw = Supernatural BioReality

22. Circumstantial Surreal 3.0

23. Biological Supernatural 3.7

24. Physical Natural 1.0