If you can set Shakespeare in a school, why not noir? Certainly director Rian Johnson couldn’t think of a reason and went on to make a significant splash at Sundance with this hard-boiled crime thriller. Thing is, can you get an audience to come along with you? Brick starts with a body and a girl for as any fan of Raymond Chandler knows, there’s always a body, and there’s always a girl. The film opens as Brendan (Gordon-Levitt) stumbles on the corpse of his now, very ex-girlfriend Emily. Flashback several days and Emily is in trouble. Brendan tries to help, a course of action that will lead him through murder, drug-dealing and gang warfare that is the foundation of his high-school. It gets tough, but Brendan is tougher.

Johnson’s script crackles with the wit and violence that is a corner-stone of noir. That this language, rather than conventional valley-speak, is delivered by high-school students is the first of many unsettling points. It takes a while to adjust to the convention but once you’re in, you’re in. Populated with familiar characters in an unfamiliar setting (Lukas Hass as a cane wielding, nineteen year old Mr Big, for instance), Brick is as disconcerting as it is engrossing. It combines all the classic ingredients with plotting that, filmed in the murky colours of continuous sunset and driven by a neo-Sam Spade, is as intriguing as it perplexing. You’ll either buy it, or you won’t. For some Brick is nothing more than a Hollywood calling card. For others, it transcends both genres to create something quite deliciously, dangerously original. And in doing so, confirms Johnson and Gordon-Levitt are People to Watch Out For.

// COLIN FRASER