"Keep up with me now."
I cannot watch this movie and cross-stitch. It is an amazing movie in every way...if you take the time to truly watch it. The performances are all riveting, and the juxtaposition of noir drama and the high school drug underworld makes for an intense and entertaining film.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Brendan Frye, a Byronic hero of sorts, whose ex-girlfriend Emily (Emilie de Ravin) gets sucked into the drug underworld and comes up again dead in a creek. Unable to help her, he wants only to find out the truth--and take down a few people who may have blood on their hands. But he also finds himself back in a world he had already renounced, tangling with all kinds--from the riffraff druggie Dode (Noah Segan), to the very overlord of the business, The Pin (Lukas Haas). Also working for The Pin is the hotheaded Tug (Noah Fleiss) and the seductive Laura (Nora Zehetner). Brendan has to balance all of these people with the help of The Brain (Matt O'Leary) and the laissez-faire policy of Assistant V.P. Gary Trueman (Richard Roundtree). The plot is twisted and no scene is insignificant, but it is well worth the viewer's effort to pay close attention. The dialogue is clever but rapid, and the viewer must make sure to catch every word. But if the viewer can keep up, the film guarantees a mesmerizing climax, followed up by haunting denouement. One can only stare, transfixed, as the entire movie is tied together in the final scene--yet the only thing moving are Brendan's lips in a close-up of him explaining all to Laura.
If the plot is rich, the cast is appropriately complex, and even the most besotted characters draw empathy. As a 26-year-old cripple running dope out of his mother's basement, Lukas Haas layers sensitivity and cold economy--we wonder why the Kingpin eats his mother's oatmeal cookies and loves the imagery of Tolkien. Tug and Dode both have weaknesses for Emily that undermine their ability to remain businesslike when it comes to drugs. And Nora Zehetner steals every scene she is in as the inscrutable femme fatale Laura. At least, she tries. It is impossible to steal a scene from Brendan. As his near-obsessive love for Emily leads him into drama beyond his own life, he holds together and breaks down all at once. In the end he makes choices and faces consequences that reach way past the death of his ex-girlfriend and affect the lives of all involved. And we stick with him through that end.
"There's not much chance of coming out clean."
I have, since writing this post, seen The Maltese Falcon; and I must now take a moment to acknowledge the moments that Brick deftly remixed out of the Bogart classic. The scene when he yells at the Vice Principal has dialogue almost exactly from The Maltese Falcon. The intimate and verbal climax on the football field closely resembles the final reveal with Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor. There is one other line (I'm afraid I can't remember right now) that is taken straight from the noir original.
ReplyDeleteWay to keep it real.