Brick is directed by its writer Rian Johnson, but it is not a movie about a story. The story itself belongs to the ranks of the dark teenage drama and the detective movie, set in the courtyard of a school (it is San Clemente High School, the same the director went to). Brick doesn’t add too much to the genre. This movie is more about how to build up a story.

We enter the plot at the end, when it is too late to change anything. This device is quite clever and gripping: there is no hope the story can turn right, thus giving an unusual and intriguing sense of inevitability. We follow the smart and brave attempts of the protagonist to deconstruct the story brick by brick to understand it. As a matter of fact: nothing special to mention.

The story is fairly articulated, quite twisted – maybe even too much. The twist is just an easy trick to support the story when it is not strong enough. All the stereotypical ingredients are here: the school, overconfident teenagers, sexual tension every now and again, drugs, fistfights, murders, a cool hero and a broken love story. There is also a brick of a different kind, but that’s just the McGuffin of the story – keeps the action going and has no meaning whatsoever.

A good dark irony brightens Brick: it is present but doesn’t become too obvious. Irony is present in the music, which sometimes gets funny and cheerful to release the tension of the drama. It is there in the contrast between the basement and the first floor of the house of the crime. It is there in the subtle tributes to the style of classic noir movies. The juxtaposition between fierce action and cheap romanticism is also ironic. Sometimes the director shoots in chiaroscuro with blinding lights and sharp shadows. The movie itself is in chiaroscuro somehow: few bright ideas emerging from the darkness of the banality of the story.

There is no room for people here, just characters, players, fighters with different skills and different reasons to fight. Everyone is cool and says the right sentence in a peculiar lingo with a perfect timing. The complete spectrum of typical characters is presented, at least the teenage version of it: the limping rational cold businessman, the muscle-bound jock blinded by his own rage, the ordinary guy forced to be a hero.

Once again, there is nothing new to see, but something unusual in the way we see it as there is no mercy for anyone. The movie actually won the Sundance Film Festival’s Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision.

Brick is a game with no winner. Everyone is guilty. Everyone is punished.

Characters, camera shots, even dialogue in this movie are well built but ordinary; they are like little square bricks: anonymous pieces that together acquire an interesting shape and almost a meaning.

Rated 15A (see IFCO website for details)
Brick is released on 12th May 2006.
Brick – Official website