MOVIE REVIEW - BRICK

everyone has a soft spot for a center film genre, and mine is for film noir. I was bitten by the hard-boiled bug when I was in high school, and American Movie Classics just debuted. I saw a bunch of those 40s flicks, stuff like Murder, My Sweet, The Big Magambo, Out of the Past, Where The Sidewalk Ends, and Laura. I couldn't get over the distinctive dialogue and delivery style of Spade, Marlowe and the others. I loved the twisted motives that circled around the murder and mayhem in that underbelly of society that those films mined so well.

Even when the genre got revivied in the early 80s and then again in the early 90s, that rip-your-head-off dialogue was absent (except in a few notable films). Obviously audiences wouldn't put up the now-cliched dialogue in a now-cliched situations in New York or LA.

Last night however, it was back (not in its glory, but close enough) in a seeminly slieght film called Brick, a film noir set in of all places southern Orange County, CA with high school seniors as our players. The cast is a bunch of nobodies, except for the weird performance by , the luminous key, but bit role by Emilie de Ravin (the best thing going on LOST) and the hot, hot, hot Meagan Goode - you remember her, right?





How can you forget those DSLs? I can't.
Meagan's performance continued make me a big fan, because it was role that showed she has some acting skills -- basically because she's not playing an archetypical Black Girl role; you know what I'm talking about... a hoochie, a golddiggin' slut, a neck-snaking ghetto bitch, or a gangster's moll (surprising, considering this was a film noir).

The Orange County location with its absentee adults and wacked out kids is a perfect setting for a new entry into the genre. Mainly, because you can't go a month without reading in the newspaper about some sad saps in the O.C. doing some bizarre-ass shit, like schoolyard planned & sanctioned gang rapes, E and coke trafficking in the cafeteria or at the local Carl's Jr., and laughable gun violence that these wannabe's emulate from their silly infatuation with the likes of the gangsta rappers they somehow feel kinship with.

The movie does a great job lifting and re-imagining the hardboiled dialogue that made everyone believe Humphery Bogart was a tough guy.

I don't know when it's coming out, and it's probably going to be overshadowed by the wildly overhyped V FOR VENDETTA - could be good, could be bad, the Wachowski Brothers are only batting .125, let's not forget that (how'd I get that number? They've been behind 5 films, so you do the math. Not living up to their potential, I'd say).

Anyway, the only interesting film noir that was out recently was that UK import Layer Cake, I'm reading the novel right now, I'll tell you how it is once I'm done. Good so far. A bit cheeky, but that's the point.