| Overall Grade: |
C- |
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| Story: |
C |
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| Acting: |
B- |
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| Direction: |
D+ |
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| Visuals: |
C- |
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This movie sinks like... well, a brick
by Wylie (movies profile)
Sep 2, 2006
4
of
7 people found this review helpful
I saw this picture a few months before it opened (in the form of a free sneak preview). Not only me but the other two people I saw it with disliked it.
While film noir is a perfectly viable genre, as is the teen-flick, this movie is a botched attempt to merge the two. It fails as film noir because the basic concept isn't very-well thought out. Ususally, when a person's dead body is found in a ditch, the local police conduct a thorough investigation. Not so in this flick. The teenage slueth - hero is the only person even remotely interested in solving the mystery of his girlfriend's death. Her family? They either don't exist, or couldn't care less. The cops? Ditto. This movie, therefore, is basically implausible.
The film-makers may have been trying to re-invent the film noir genre by placing it in a suburban high-school setting. But the characters don't act or talk like any eighteen-year-olds I have ever known. They are all hard-boiled types, each with a secret to hide or a deadly game to play, straight out of a Raymond Chandler novel. Their actions and speeches are too far-fetched to be believable. This approach could have worked as satire, perhaps - but this movie isn't played as one. If I am in the mood for film noir, I would get a lot more pleasure from "Double Indemnity" on the small-screen than by seeing "Brick" again on the big one. |
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