Here's a line for you: ""When the upper-crust does shady deeds, they do them all over town, and the pitch is, they got these little symbols so they can tell each other without word getting around."" This line may seem meaningless to you outside of the context from which it derives, but the second I tell you it's from a film noir, bells start to ring, don't they?
There's that certain timbre—a way of speaking originated perhaps by Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade in 1941—that film noir is known for. It has always been a popular genre and was once mastered in the depths of Classic Hollywood, but as of late, we've seen very few neo-noir films at all, let alone those filed under the success category.
""LA Confidential"" certainly brought our interest to the table, but can it be called a renewal? Is it something new or just a remake of something old? I think what it's missing is that bold sense of dialogue. It's almost there—right on the verge, like an AB or a date cancelled at the very last minute.
Perhaps filmmakers just don't think it'll work anymore: the rolling monologues or snappy retorts, all heavy on the metaphors and integral to plot development. Audiences these days are so intent on seeing everything—special effects, tantalizing scenery, skinny women, dapper costumes—but can we still listen? Is the reason a great neo-noir film is so hard to find just that we can no longer sit through dialogue and follow what the people are actually saying? Because, in my experience, it is with film noir that you must listen most intently. Yet, it's also with film noir that the most satisfying plots come to shocking, delicious ends. These are the films that are worth it—and 2005's ""Brick,"" the movie from which I derived the line above, is one of them.
""Brick"" is also one of those movies nobody saw. There are three copies of it at Blockbuster and maybe a few more at Video Heaven. I think I saw one preview for it when I saw ""Brokeback Mountain"" at the Oriental Theatre in Milwaukee. Either way, it's a neo-noir gem. And by neo, I mean it took the genre for what it was, kept each part of the formula in tact and, yet, gave it something completely different.
Of course, the criterion for a noir film are incredibly specific: the unsuspecting hero, light/dark contrasts, fallboys, paranoia, corrupt authority figures, the femme fatale and the exotic past lover. ""Brick"" takes it all and places it in the setting of a suburban high school where the femme fatale is 17, and the paranoia comes from who you sit with at lunch. The corrupt authority is a power-hungry school principal, and the unsuspecting hero is his secret high school kid snitch, Brendan Frye (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Writer/director Rian Johnson went no-holds-barred in his unrelenting screenplay which chronicles the inner-workings of a high school drug ring that Brendan believes is directly involved with the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend.
The greatest and most unique part of ""Brick"" is its Bogie/classic noir approach to dialogue. We all loved Joseph Gordon-Levitt in ""10 Things I Hate About You,"" but he becomes a real machine for talent in ""Brick."" Try to imagine Paul Walker saying, in all seriousness: ""Throw one at me if you want, hash head. I've got all five senses and I slept last night. That puts me six up on the lot of you."" Levitt makes it look natural, even appealing, like the world they live in, while dangerous and highly exaggerated, is just that much better than ours.
Movies that create this kind of euphoria, that sense that we've been immersed in some other world, are difficult to come by, but ""Brick"" will have anybody consumed from the very first scene. It's underrated and so dear to my heart that I felt the need to dedicate an entire column to it. So if you haven't seen it, I'll be blunt when I say: Do yourself a favor. Drop everything you're doing and rent it immediately.
