Used the affluent OC location to good effect without laboring the point. Great screenplay.

Despite a few moments where it crossed over into Bugsy Malone type awareness of the fact that these are teenagers in high school, this film really pulled it off. It wasn’t a superficial stylistic thing with dark shadows. It captured not only the overwrought verbal onslaught of noir but also the confusion, the total annihlation of trust, and the uncertainty of public and private spaces. Perhaps a bit of an exercise, but it worked, especially the last two thirds.

Really enjoyed this!

Ostensibly an amateur murder investigation come drug warnings, it’s very stylised – film noir, in fact! – particularly in terms of camera angles, characters with set roles, patterns of speech (loved it!) and the whole pace as the mystery unfolds.

The thing I liked least was the high school setting, which I found a little… irritating, somehow. At least at first. And yet it really really works. It adds to the claustraphobic feel, of everybody having to circulate in these little groups.

I did at one point wonder if everyone in this town was involved in taking or selling drugs, but go figure! Very much a ‘Just say no, kids!’, under it all.

Mostly, though, I loved that this was that little bit different. It’s not going to mainstream, it’s quirky but cleverly so. Definitely worth a viewing, if just to shift your brain up several (dozen) notches from M:I-3!!!

I’ll see YOU in the parent-teacher conference!

Go see this movie NOW.

A common problem with many updated films noir is that they mistake the look and dialogue as the most important elements. While noir is about crime, it’s a genre that was formed out of the angst and uncertainty of post World War II America. Unlike other genres, the classic film noir was made as a crime thriller with largely european directors working in a visually stylized way within financial constraints. Updated film noir often substitutes surface for substance. But in Brick Rian Johnson treats the source material with respect and by setting the story in a high school he maintains the connection to the dark heart of film noir, which is existential dread. Instead of seeing the story unfold in the closed world of the criminal world, we see things within the insular world of high school. It works brilliantly and it’s a film that instantly has jumped onto my top ten list of films for 2006.