Brick

Brick transfers Dashiell Hammett’s hard-boiled universe to the modern high school campus with nary a clue that more than a half-century has passed since the Continental Op’s heyday. Writer-director Johnson provides an original way to look at the world of high school with its bewitching young girls passing for femmes fatales and its lunkhead teen bullies filling in for professional mob muscle. There are drugs, a kingpin, and an intrepid young hero cherchezing his mysteriously errant femme. Yet no matter how stellar Johnson’s re-creation of the noir universe is, Brick comes across as more of an exercise than an emotionally invested drama. The staccato clip of the dialogue and the dated slang, although a good mimicry of Hammett’s style, seem out of place in the otherwise contemporary milieu of suburban high school. Keeping the dialogue and doomed noir atmosphere afloat are the terrific central performances by Gordon-Levitt and Haas.