Brick

Wordy but worthy.

Herald rating: * * * *

So far as genre-splicing goes, it sounds like it shouldn't be allowed out of the laboratory. But this, a high-school clique flick meeting the hardboiled 1940s crime fiction of Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler is there to be taken seriously.

Somehow, debuting feature writer-director Rian Johnson sustains an entire movie with his teenage characters chewing on lines like: "I bet you, if you got every rat in town together and said 'Show your hands if any of them have actually seen The Pin', you'd get a crowd of full pockets." It sure is wordy. And it can take a while adjusting to the gimmicks and rhythms of its language. But fortunately Brick has more than antique dialogue to distinguish it. There's also a terrific lead performance from Gordon-Levitt as Brendan Frye and there's the dense but engrossing whodunnit plot concerning the apparent murder of Brendan's ex-girlfriend Emily (Emilie de Ravin), which may or may not be related to the aforementioned local drug dealer The Pin and his school's many cliques.

As well as that crime kingpin - played by Haas, who exudes quite some menace despite his character still living with his mother - there are a couple of femme fatales attempting to distract the teenage gumshoe from the truth as he navigates his high school's underworld of stoned slackers, angry jocks and cheerleader vamps.

Its pile-up of final-act convolutions risks it becoming the too-clever-for-its-own good exercise it has threatened from the outset.

But Brick keeps its hip wits about it long enough to show that high school noir is the new black.

Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lukas Haas, Emilie de Ravin
Director: Rian Johnson
Running time: 110 mins
Rating: M (medium level violence)
Screening: Rialto cinemas
Verdict: Pulp fiction gets high-school refresher with mindbending result