Interesting Film - Brick

I watched an interesting film last night called Brick. It was set in and around an American high school but it was different because it had all the conventions and was in the style of a 70s detective show/movie like Starsky and Hutch. For example there was a euphemism or acronym for every other noun to the extent that they almost had an "underground" language that towards the end you could understand which helps to unify the audience. Another convention was the generic character profiles, that the principle was the tough main chief constable that was willing to make a deal for information, the protagonist was the lone wolf, don’t care what anybody thinks don't play by the rules sort of guy and there was the femme fatal in the form of the drug dealers girlfriend with the wandering eye.

The story was of a lone wolf outsider who after the death of his girlfriend enlists the help of his best friend (in the form of the guy who knows everything about anything character) to track down the person responsible for her death and upon doing so discovers a web of lies, deceit and corruption that results in a master plan that no living man could ever have conceived.

Although I thought the film was very good, it was shot beautifully and it had Joseph Gorden-Levitt (one of my favourite up and coming actors) there were some bad points to. For example it was very samey, there wasn’t very much variation in the colour or edit from shot to shot which was probably due to the gimmicky, quirky, 70s style but it hindered it massively as the film didn’t really seem to go any where and unfortunately the sort of Dirty Harry style of acting came across at some points to be quite wooden as I don’t think that it works on the modern stage.

From this I have learnt that my film will be made or broken on the back of the acting and the story. This is because, as in the film, in closed net stories you get drawn into the characters and their backgrounds so if the performance is poor, the whole thing becomes unbelievable (which is the opposite of what I want as one of the vital conventions of a thriller is that, in their own universe, what you see on screen could actually happen) and it all falls down.

All in all I think it was a brilliant, quirky film that’s only faults came from its own gimmick and it will be very useful in developing the feel of the film.