"Brick" Film Review

A brooding Heath Ledger look-alike roams around town, interrogating various colourful identities to find information on the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend. That's the plot of the film 'Brick' in a nutshell. That synopsis wasn't very good, but neither is the movie. What is supposed to be a modern noir who-dunnit movie quickly dissolves into an indecipherable mess.

'Brick', at first glance, appears to be an intriguing high school who-dunnit, but after about 20 minutes you may start to grow restless. This is thanks to the entire absence of any engaging events. It's not helped by monotone dialogue, bland scenery and one-dimensional characters. The lead character Brendan 9played by a depressing Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is hard to like, and the ex-girlfriend that he was trying to find received no sympathy from me. The other characters aren't worth mentioning, apart from underground players 'The Pin' and 'Tugger'. They provide some minor entertainment to an otherwise boring feature, with the heavily-built Tugger finding any excuse to beat the crap out of anything that moves. Unfortunately, this is the only redeeming quality for this disappointing film.

Moving on to the structure of the film, my mood towards 'Brick' lightens. Mixtures of various camera angles help create the depressing atmosphere that runs throughout the whole film. Foreshortening and wide establishing shots also create a sense of wide open space. That means more space for Brendan to stroll around in with his hands in his jacket pockets. In some scenes, atmospheric lighting is used to set the mood for a conversation, but unfortunately, the actual conversations will bore you into a coma, so you may not have the chance to notice the lighting or the effective camera angles.

Now its crunch time. I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone who doesn't want an hour and a half of sleep. Deadpan acting, confusing storyline and un-interesting characters make this a film to avoid, or better yet, roll over with a truck and incinerate the remains in a furnace. But that's just my opinion.