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Brick
Rated R for violence and drug content;
Set in an indeterminate, pre-cellular year in which phone booths are used every few minutes, "Brick" is a Dashiell Hammett-style murder mystery featuring almost exclusively teenage characters behaving in a highly stylized manner.
Brief appearances by one out-of-it mom and one school vice principal beg curiosity about the absence of any other adults.
Southern California high school student Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) tries to solve the murder of former girlfriend Emily (Emilie de Ravin) while slugging or being slugged by several other characters such as the thug Tugger (Noah Fleiss).
Brendan's impenetrable investigation, which leads to femme fatale Laura (Nora Zehetner) and a drug kingpin called The Pin (Lukas Haas), is poorly written despite all of its allusions to Hammett. It is indifferently paced, amateurishly acted (Gordon-Levitt, Fleiss and Haas endure the dialogue better than most) and compromised from the outset by ambiguous "Twin Peaks" plotting.
The blue-gray cinematography may be intended to suggest black and white, but is merely dreary. The one promising component is Johnson's selection and arrangement of shots to convey information visually.
- At Squirrel Hill Theater.
