Brick - March 2006 (1 Viewer)

[Vegas 1]

I watched this movie last night, first I liked the film as I like most Focus Feature films. Two things seemed somewhat odd, there were only 2 adults in the film and do high school kids really have conversations like that. I guess I'm out of touch, maybe it's my age. Oh well!

 

[ToddP]

It's not meant to be an accurate portrayal of conversations between modern day high school kids. It's a throwback detective story dropped into a high school setting. The dialog is what you would expect to find in a '30s era period piece.

 

[rich_d]

Duplicate Post

 

[rich_d]

Agreed.

As far as few adults appearing, that's an old, old approach used in books (Hardy Boys), Film (Our Gang), Cartoons (Peanuts) etc. Admittedly, in the last 30 years, 'coming of age' and horror films have taken it to a new level where adults look like they've all been abducted.

 

[Citizen87645]

Just watched this and was impressed with how it was shot, edited, and written. BUT I couldn't get past the high school setting, and this from a guy who loves "Buffy" and "Veronica Mars" and has no problem with teen characters acting beyond their years, being in "real world" situations, etc. I know this an atrocious comparison given the work and technical quality of the film, but I couldn't help thinking of "Bugsy Malone" where little kids are dressed up and talking like gangsters. I really wanted to like the movie, but bottom line it didn't work for me. I do think people should watch it though and make up their own minds - I imagine I'm in the minority with my opinion.

 

[Rakesh.S]

Thought this flick sucked, and sucked hard.

There's no room for newbies..and it's strictly for people that grew up watching 1940s film noir.

I can see why executives didn't want to finance it.

 

[ToddP]

Well, I didn't grow up watching noir...in fact I was never really into the genre. I loved the film. I thought it was fantastic and extremely well executed. I even ran out the next day and bought the dvd to support the artist.

 

[Matt Czyz]

What?! I'm no fan of film noir at all, especially early film noir, and I absolutely loved Brick. Beautifully shot, fantastic sound design, great acting...a good movie is a good movie.

(And what did you mean by "there's no room for newbies" anyway?)

 

[Kevin Grey]

Watched this tonight and loved. One of the things that struck me is that it felt rather timeless- my wife asked me early on if it took place in the eighties based on the lead character's shoes of all things, and outside of the one cell phone that plays a role in the movie, there is heavy use of payphones (don't see that too often anymore) and no mention of computers or the internet.

Special note must go to the sound design:

During the "chase scene", I loved how the director made the contrasting footsteps very obvious so that when Brendan takes off his shoes, you immediately understand why he's doing that.

Loved the score too- one of the more interesting ones I've heard in recent memory.

 

[rich_d]

I found it interesting too. I purchased the soundtrack which I really enjoy.

 

[Seth Paxton]

I saw it last week on DVD myself.

I haven't quite decided how I rank it, but I'm leaning toward 8.5, maybe 9. Pretty well directed, outstanding writing. Even though it might be seen as a gimmick, just replacing the noir settings with high school and don't even bother to alter the lingo or dialects used, it's actually just a great idea passing as a gimmick.

It's got a solid noir story and all of the acting/dialog is enjoyable to see in action. It's clearly a suspension of disbelief or metaphorical viewing type of film.

One my my favorite "homages" to noir gangsters was having a kingpin type having his mother in his life still (as in living with or prominent influence). Naturally this should be true for any high school aged kid, but in this film it is out of place and it ends up reminiscent of Cagney's mom in White Heat or Pesci swinging by his mom's place to get knives in Goodfellas.

They didn't miss a trick on any of the key elements of a noir.

Anyway, it's at least as interesting as Lurhman's Romeo + Juliet in terms of resetting a genre/story without changing the language.

 

[David_Blackwell]

one of my favorite films on DVD this year. I would love to see an SE released.

 

[MarkMel]

Just saw this last night. What a great film. I too am not really a follower of noir films and my wife even had me turn on the subtitles so that we could get what was being said. It was much more enjoyable this way even though I hate turning them on. Since I am not that familiar with noir, I said hey this sounds like one of those old detective movies. I'm so not familiar with noir that I came here to look-up what style the dialogue was and it was this thread that I learned of it's origin.