Brick

A hardboiled detective story transplanted into a suburban Southern California high school, Rian Johnson's debut feature is an absorbingly original homage to classic film noir. Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Brendan Frye, a brooding, whip-smart loner who takes it upon himself to infiltrate the seedy underworld of his school to find out what happened to his troubled ex-girlfriend, whose body he discovers face down in a storm drain in the film's harrowing opening scene. The characters are mostly stock noir players straight out of 1920s-era pulp who speak in a mumbly genre lingo rife with cultural allusions, and some—The Brain, The Pin—Johnson doesn't even give names. The fact that they're in a modern-day school setting is compelling, if a little contrived. Brick is at once minimalist and complex; sweeping, stark gray establishing shots lead into intricately arranged interiors that are stylized, but familiar. If author Dashiell Hammett's Miles Archer had gone to high school in San Clemente in the ‘90s, Gordon-Levitt's Brendan could well have been his Sam Spade. Johnson's labyrinthine mystery swallows its audience whole, due in part to his seamless editing, the tension perpetuated by even the most mundane of objects. The viewer's willing suspension of disbelief is but an afterthought, as the story is presented in a way that, despite being highly stylized, is disturbingly real.