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Brick
Focus Features


7.5

based on 34 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 67 votes
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MPAA RATING: R for violent and drug content

Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lukas Haas, Nora Zehetner, Noah Segan, Noah Fleiss, Emilie de Ravin, and Meagan Good

Brick, while taking its cues and its verbal style from the novels of Dashiell Hammett, also honors the rich cinematic tradition of the hard-boiled noir mystery, here wittily and bracingly immersed in fresh territory – a modern-day Southern California neighborhood and high school. (Focus Features)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Mystery
WRITTEN BY:	Rian Johnson
DIRECTED BY:	Rian Johnson
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: August 8, 2006 Theatrical: March 31, 2006
RUNNING TIME:	110 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

Special Jury Prize (Dramatic), 2005 Sundance Film Festival

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Manages to be visually arresting, packed with geeky allusions to everything from Raymond Chandler to "Blue Velvet."

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

A Big Sleep with underage bozos, a Maltese Falcon where the stuff that dreams are made of rests in the lockers of a well-worn high school, Brick is a remarkable oddity, audacious and engaging.

Film Threat Jeremy Mathews

With brilliant dialogue out of the 1940s and graceful visuals that add depth to the dark comedy, Johnson debuts with a smart, self-assured feature that portrays adolescence like no other film has.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Brick is Bogart goes to high school, in other words, but that thumbnail description doesn't begin to convey the lasting pleasures of Rian Johnson's directorial debut.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Johnson also grabs hold of a fundamental truth and seduces us with it: The schoolyard can be the noirest burg of all.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

It's reminiscent of David Lynch, who is a master at mixing the ghastly and the risible. Brick would be better with a bit more Lynch in its soul, but Johnson is his own man, and I look forward to what he comes up with next.

Empire Damon Wise

With a superb lead turn by rising star Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Rian Johnson’s debut is a smart, original neo-noir that works as an ingenious mindgame as well as a slick Hollywood calling card.

The New Yorker David Denby

All in all, this twerpy little movie is one of the most entertaining pictures to be released so far this year.

The Hollywood Reporter Duane Byrge

The mean streets don't get any nastier than the high school parking lots in this cool-crafted mystery.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

Johnson has taken a well-worn, much-revised genre, adapted to what's become a clichéd setting and transcended both in the process.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Brick doesn't work 100 percent of the time, but it's a striking achievement, beautifully shot, often hilarious and occasionally moving.

Premiere Ethan Alter

It takes a good fifteen minutes to fully adjust to the screenplay's rhythms, but once you do, the dialogue is a lot of fun to listen to.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

"Sensational" is the word for Joseph Gordon-Levitt (equally striking in Mysterious Skin), who stars as Brendan, the teen outsider who becomes a budding Bogart.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

It's Gordon-Levitt's pitch-perfect work that makes Brick a hardboiled treat.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

First-time writer-director Rian Johnson's gimmick is that his SoCal teens talk like film-noir yeggs and dames, slinging hard-boiled shade and spitting out terse, rat-a-tat dialogue peppered with slang that was yesterday's news 40 years before they were born. But the result is, against all odds, marvelously entertaining.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

This movie leaves me looking forward to the director's next film; we can say of Rian Johnson, as somebody once said about a dame named Brigid O'Shaughnessy, "You're good. You're very good."

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

The concept is clever and Johnson's brisk editing, dynamic camerawork and snazzy transitions has fun with it all. It makes for an inspired time-warped teenage film noir.

San Francisco Chronicle Neva Chonin

A weird and near-perfect polyglot of indie art film and noir mystery.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Brick is kinda brilliant and kinda demented, and you love it for the former far more than you hold the latter against it.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Mainly, it's a clever gimmick, cleverly wrought, offering further evidence that you can dress up the student body in all manner of garb for all types of genres.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Like a good campfire storyteller, writer-director Rian Johnson knows how to fuse the amusing and the edgy. And, in Brendan, he has created an endearing character.

Slate Troy Patterson

Like the best noirs, Brick is a triumph of attitude, and there's no arguing that its brand of deadpan cool is precisely unique.

Variety Todd McCarthy

The story, while derivative, isn't half bad, and the picture gains in finesse and confidence to the point where Johnson more or less pulls off his peril-fraught exercise.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

It's worth seeing for the tightly coiled plot, well-realized characters, and novel take on rapacious teen culture.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

The hair may thin considerably under Brick's hat after a while, and Hammett redone remains Hammett half done, but while the plates are in the air, it's a spectacle of nerve.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Writer-director Rian Johnson gives the usual teen angst an entertaining kick. But the joke wears off, and what's left is as convoluted and monotonous as any conventional hard-boiled mystery.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

Johnson pulls us into his world and keeps things oddly plausible, despite the intense stylization

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Gordon-Levitt already proved in last year's "Mysterious Skin" his captivating command as a dramatic actor; with Brick he further demonstrates his remarkable dexterity and range.

Miami Herald Peter Debruge

This is neither the noir world of old '40s movies, of which he's clearly fond, nor something new and original enough to fit the concept. Instead, it feels like a blueprint for someone else to figure out.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Johnson combines the elements of classic 1940s film noir and "Rebel Without a Cause"-style teen angst in a movie that is as phony as it is ambitious. It's an A+ film school exercise with zero emotional or social impact.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Has the inherent limits of all movies that feed on movies, rather than life -- it's original, yet it's not.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

It's all so seamy, sordid, lurid and shocking! And dull, despite a noirish gloss of wide-angle cinematography and a jaundiced, smoggy color scheme.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Alas, Brick, from writer-director Rian Johnson, isn't as clever as its conceit.

Chicago Tribune Allison Benedikt

Challenging to follow, at best.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.5 (out of 10) based on 67 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Donal M. gave it a10:
Absolutely fantastic film. Brilliant storyline, well told. Very little special effects, adds to the effect. Also found it witty at times.

Domenic P. gave it a10:
This is a great take on the traditional noir. The actors all deliver surprisingly great performances for people their age, and Johnson's direction is pitch-perfect.

JW gave it a10:
In my mind, the noirisms hit their stride when the character of Brain is introduced and he utters the line: "Lunch? Lunch is difficult...." A better summation of high school I've never heard. And NO LAPTOP! He got the reputation as "Brain," not by being a geek computer whiz or building robots, but by his detailed knowledge of social strata and teenage communication. In fact, aside from a loner cell phone, most communication in the movie is done longhand - either person-to-person or in symbollic notes, etc. I love all of it. The Brat Pack movies have at last been put under.

xiti gave it a10:
I saw it by chance and I think it's very very interesting, it has a very intelligent script and a very good rhythm

J S gave it a10:
Brick bleeds Dashiell Hammett and it amazes me how seamlessly the filmmakers brought hard-boiled detective fiction to a high school setting.

Kip M. gave it a10:
What a feat. Rian Johnson is shaping up to be one of the best directors out of the mainstream today. His debut "Brick" is completely new take on both the detective and high school genres and blends them mostly seamlessly. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, miles away from his alternative teen idol days on "3rd Rock" and "10 Things I Hate about You," is absolutely brilliant as Brendan, alone by choice, who is smarter than anyone in the room and uses that to his advantage. The labyrinthe plot (involving an ex-girlfriend's murder and a giant web of drug dealers and users) is never too confusing or unnecessary. You learn every detail along with Brendan, piecing it together in search of closure and justice. The noir dialogue doesn't take you out of the plot; it envelops you into its world.

Alex S gave it a9:
Being a fan of film noir hardboiled styles Brick came as a nice surprise when I was expecting a simple high-school drama. It's fast and well planned pacing draws you in, and you soon realise this is so much more than it seems. The characters seem entirely realistic; there being no real villain (I wouldn't classify the Pin as a villain), and a dark protagonist, seem like real people you might find around any high-school social scene. The brilliant acting also brings the story to life as a film noir work. It can sometimes be a little hard to follow considering it's speed, but once you're on the level, it's a great story through-and-through.

Brick Focus Features

Brick
Focus Features