| | | Focus Features Spotlight Series.
Features: DVD, Widescreen, Dolby, Dolby Digital (5.1), English, French, Spanish
Brendan Frye is a loner, someone who knows all the angles but has chosen to stay on the outside. When the girl he loves turns up dead, he is determined to find the "who" and "why" and plunges into the dark and dangerous social strata of rich girl Laura, intimidating Tug, drug-addled Dode, seductive Kara, and the ominous Pin. But who can he really trust These are the ingredients of Brick, a gritty and provocative thriller that critics describe as "a clever, twist-filled whodunit!" (Claudia Puig, USA Today)System Requirements:Running Time: 110 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE
"A spellbinder! It pins you to your seat." Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
"Johnson pulls his hipster revisionism with cine-savvy brilliance..." Total Film
"...original dialogue and a distinctive visual style." USA Today
Editor's Note
A detective story set around a contemporary California high school, BRICK dares to combine the teen and film noir genres. In mixing these two disparate worlds, Director Rian Johnson creates many comically jarring and ironic moments. When loner Brendan Frye (a barely recognizable Joseph Gordon-Levitt of THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN) gets a desperate-sounding call from his ex-love Emily (Emilie de Ravin), he feels compelled to help her, plunging himself into the seedy world of teenage crime that pulled her away from him in the first place. Throughout this journey, Brendan plays a hard-boiled type reminiscent of Humphrey Bogart's iconic Sam Spade character. Johnson's script invests heavily in the fiction of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, and is filled with other archetypical characters like the femme fatale (Nora Zehetner), the eccentric crime lord (a brilliant Lukas Haas), and the dame in distress (de Ravin). As teens trade in their cell phones for things as old-fashioned as pay phones and 1940s gangster vocabulary, occasional references to detention and first period provide a humorous contrast with the otherwise unbelievable complex, precocious, and largely parentless world that these teens inhabit.With its heavy reliance on references to old noir classics like THE MALTESE FALCON and THE BIG SLEEP, the film may risk alienating viewers not familiar with these older films. Seeing teenagers speaking in coded detective-movie-style lingo is entertaining, but mixed with the often overlapping, fast-paced but muttered dialogue, it also proves to be distracting at points. People eager to see a predictable teen drama may be confused by BRICK, as its goal is to turn the genre on its head, earning inevitable comparisons to films like 2001's surreal teen fantasy DONNIE DARKO. Because of the film's attention to detail and witty yet hard-to-follow dialogue, BRICK may be better appreciated on second viewing.
| Features | Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound | | Deleted Scenes | | Extended Scenes | | Feature Audio Commentary By Cast & Filmmakers | | Featurette: Casting The Roles | | Interactive Menus | | Scene Selection | | Subtitles: English, French, Spanish |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Universal |
| Release Date: 9/9/2008 |
| Running Time: 110 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 2006 | | Catalog ID: 28663 | | UPC: 00025192866326 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English | | Available Subtitles: English, French, Spanish | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Anamorphic Widescreen 1.85:1 |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
Independent Spirit (2006) | | | Ram Bergman, Nominee, Producers Award | | | Rian Johnson, et. al., Nominee, John Cassavetes Award | |
Sundance Film Festival (2005) |  | Rian Johnson, Winner, Special Jury Prize - Dramatic | | | Rian Johnson, Nominee, Grand Jury Prize - Dramatic |
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| | Professional Reviews | Rolling Stone
3 stars out of 4 -- "Johnson plunges off the deep end, risking ridicule by shaping this spellbinder with grit and gravitas....Johnson's BRICK is the stuff that dreams are made of." 04/06/2006 p.75Movieline's Hollywood Life
"This high school film noir deserves credit for novelty. Writer-director Rian Johnson also has a rare gift for language." 03/01/2006 p.101 Entertainment Weekly
"BRICK is all about style and sass....But Johnson also grabs hold a fundamental truth and seduces us with it: the schoolyard can be the noirest burg of all." -- Grade: B 04/14/2006 p.59-60 Total Film
"Johnson pulls his hipster revisionism with cine-savvy brilliance and twitchy laughs....Bursts of action arrive with a wallop..." 06/01/2006 p.42 USA Today
"BRICK takes two very disparate genres, film noir detective mysteries and high school dramas, and melds them into one intriguing premise, with original dialogue and a distinctive visual style." 03/31/2006 p.4E Sight and Sound
"What it borrows from noir is not simply a set of style cues, but a sense of obsessiveness, solemnity and encroaching social breakdown, which serves as a satisfying metaphor for the self-enclosed, self-regulating society occupied by teenagers." 06/01/2006 p.42 Box Office
"While BRICK is chock-full of the characters, language and imager of classic noir, it is in fact set among contemporary teenagers." 07/01/2006 p.69 Uncut
4 stars out of 4 -- "The most eccentric feature to emerge from the US indie scene in years....One of the pleasures of 2006." 10/01/2006 p.156 Ultimate DVD
4 stars out of 5 -- "Johnson creates a complex, sophisticated thriller that audaciously fuses two disparate genres....Gordon-Levitt delivers an intense and focused performance." 10/01/2006 p.100 The Guardian 7 of 10
The high school movie has always been a uniquely powerful genre capable of fiercely adult themes, and it is possible to read Brick as a stylised dream-metaphor for the pain of young love or the agony of drug-abuse. But it is difficult to care much about these weirdly contrived characters, and Brick is more a super-smart experiment in style, maintained with tremendous energy and consistency. It's gratifyingly hard-boiled - but not as tasty as you'd think. - Peter Bradshaw
Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
Brick is a movie reportedly made with great determination and not much money by Rian Johnson, who did the editing on his Macintosh (less impressive than it sounds, since desktop machines are now often used even on big-budget movies). What is impressive is his absolute commitment to his idea of the movie's style. He relates to the classic crime novels and movies, he notes the way their mannered dialogue and behavior elevates the characters into archetypes, and he uses the strategy to make his teenagers into hard-boiled guys and dolls. The actors enter into the spirit; we never catch them winking. - Roger Ebert
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