Low budget, but very high in script and thought quality, this neo-noir has Chandler's trademarks: wit, its own argot, complexity and a final awful moment of realisation. Great stuff.

I am about 50 years older than the characters in the film. As it turns out they speak a different English than I. Even with subtitles and even if many of the words sounded familiar, I was completely lost. Finally, after 80 minutes, I admitted defeat and stopped watching it.Please note that I am a white person who lives in the US just like the kids in the movie. In addition, I am a retired professor at a major state university who dealt with thousands of kids over the years. Nevertheless, I never in my life met kids with such an odd vocabulary. Am I out of touch?

Brick is an ''ok'' representation of old films noir in nowadays. It makes a great job in producing all the mystery and suspense atmosphere that old movies of the genre could create. The color editing, the way that the characters speaks and acts, it makes you feel the tense climate but it also makes the film a bit boring because of the long dialogues scenes.The movie happens in a modern high school and has a nerdy looking guy named Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) as the main character. He starts searching for his ex-girlfriend, Emily (Emilie de Ravin) when she calls him asking for his help. After finding her dead body, Brendan goes deeper in secrets and crime gangs.In general, Brick is a good film for who wants to remember an old noir but it lacks in creating good characters and there's no introduction at all: the film fails in creating a relationship between the characters and the audience, their personalities are very bad and forgetful, it's very artificial; it looks like there's no introduction to the film, when it starts things are already going on, you don't even know who is the main character, maybe it's part of the genre but it was not made in a good way this time. I would change a lot in the characters, maybe put a bit of emotion to them and add an introduction explaining what is going on and things that happened that have lead to the situation.

The Brick is quite like many film noirs as it includes a very cynical protagonist who has some shady dealings, he is also trying to solve a crime in a dark and mysterious setting, finally there is definitely a femfatal or two. However, unlike other more classic film noirs it takes place in or close to the present and as opposed to fallowing a hardened criminal or a private detective, it fallows an angry albeit intelligent high school student, with most of the other characters being teenagers too. As such the film is classified as a neo noir film. This style gives it all the charm of most noir films with a new back drop. This is a large part of the reason why I found the movie so enjoyable. The movie like many great noir films leaves you jumping at shadow and confused Intel the end. Although the film can often be a little confusing do to the unusual dialog and terminology of the film but this does add something to the mystery and some thing to the atmosphere of the film so in the end it can be forgiven for them. So if your looking for a good noir film that has something new then this is the film for you.