With a Little Help From My Friends: BRICK

Haven’t done one of these in about nine months. For those of you new to reading this space, this is a feature that I try to write sporadically. I’ve asked people I know to recommend some of their lesser-known favorite movies for me to watch.

Once I watch them, I try to combine my thoughts on the movie, with some observations about the recommendation in general. So every once in a while, I’ll put up posts like this, which I’m call “With a Little Help From My Friends”.

Today, I’m looking at BRICK, at the suggestion of my dear friend Special K. My thoughts after the jump

The Details:BRICK – USA, 2005. Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lukas Haas, Noah Fleiss, Emille de Ravin, and Nora Zehetner.

The Source: Special K. Dear friend who I haven’t seen in a while. A woman with quite good taste in movies, and a knack for finding some of the lesser-known titles that get past me.

The Reason: She actually emailed me a novel’s worth of reasons mid-screening, fearing that I wasn’t enjoying what I was seeing. Front and centre among the laundry list of awesome points, was the fact that BRICK is essentially a contemporary-looking noir film. The dialogue, set pieces, and characters all seem like they could have been ripped from a 1940’s Bogart flick.

The Reaction: Sweet lord did I dig this movie!! K rightly pointed out that while many films try to use young pretty people to update a classic genre, very seldom to they stick to plan. BRICK never strays, making it a very intense and sometimes tricky film to watch. What we get is a murder story, and rather than a fedora-wearin’, Camel smokin’ gumshoe…we have a gangly, bespectacled highschool senior trying to figure out what has happened to the damsel in distress.

The language in this movie is crackling, often dropping terms that most classic noir films use. The language is so true to form actually, that many viewers may have a hard time keeping up with that’s going on. When I wasn’t stunned trying to keep up with the script, I was dazzled by the nifty photography. The camera likes to stay back, leaving a lot of negative space…giving a lot of daylight for situations to unfold, and characters to come in and out of the scene. The colour quality is a bit poor, but there’s no touching its composition. If I could give any one note, it’d be to render the whole film in black and white.

Adding It Up: As far as this series of recommendations goes, Special K has just taken the top spot on the leader board. The other three films that have been reccomended so far have been “alright”, but none of them left me this dumbstruck. When the credits rolled on BRICK I was immediately struck with the urge to add it to my DVD collection…so this time out, my friends have provided more than just “a little” help.

The only bittersweet moment for me, was thinking about how little I’ve seen Special K for the last while. Especially since I miss talking about awesome finds like this!