BRICK
Brick was released in 2005, it is an American neo-noir film which was written and directed by Rhian Johnson, Johnson admired books written by Dashiell Hammett. Johnson liked the hardboiled detectives and he read most of Hammett's books, Johnson grew up with film noir which made him more interested in creating his own noir but different. This is where he created Brick.
When the film starts at first the music for the opening screen is gentle but has a hint of sadness and mysteriousness, a lot of the sound through the film are done with classic instruments just like a film noir would have. However there is one scene where a unusual instrument is used, unusual because you don't hear them at all in film noirs but it still adds effect to make the emotion of the movie come across, maybe this is just a new take on sound for Neo noirs. When we first see two of the characters we can guess that these two are quite important and they are the most important character there is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt who is Brendan Frye, Brendan choose to distance himself from other people and really on talks to one person and thats a character called Brain. We find this out later in the film and we also find out that he's the noir's anti-hero, just like a film noir would have. The first scene shows Brendan and a blonde haired girl, the girl is laying on the floor at this point we're guessing she's hurt or even worse dead by the way Brendan's facial expressions are however we don't know how. In good old Noir fasion we then get a flash back, our flash back is of two days a go. This scene starts of with barely any talking, just Brendan walking up to his locker an where he finds a piece of paper telling him where to go. This is used to spread the tension, because on the opening Johnson has already grabbed the audiences attention it's just making them wait to see what will happen nexted. We then find out that the woman on the floor was actually Brendan's Ex girlfriend Emily Kostich who is played by Emilie de Ravin. He recieves a distressed call from her, this is when he tries to be the hero and goes out to find her but later on finds her dead near the bridge. Brendan then becomes a detective of some sort to try and find out what happened to Emily and why it happened. This starts to make him into a hardboiled character just like Johnson wanted, he starts using a lot of violence to find out what he needs. This kind of leads up to where he meets the Pin and 'Tug', we see Brendan fight quite a bit in this intill him and Tug meet. Tug is played by Noah Fleiss, an associate of the Pin's, his right hand man that gets the dirty stuff.
Tug seems to be motivated by violence and uses it a lot on our main character, The Pin is a drug dealer and one of the largest ones around, he's played by Lukas Haas.
There are two Femme Fatales in Brick, one is Laura Dannon, a popular high school girl who has a lot of knowledge on Pin and she is involved with some of th Pin's dealings. She tries to get Brendan to trust her through out the whole film after Emily's death but Brendan doesn't really have any of it intill he turns into the anti-hero where he sleeps with her but he's soon to notice her fag but and remembers it from the call when Emily called him. She's always there when Brendan needed help, the props that she wears are 1950's style some of them anyway like the fur coat and even how she has her hair at points all link back to film noir. Brendan finds her out a makes the jigsaw fit together when he finds out she was the one who caused Emily's death. Like a Femme fatale would she begs Bredan to believe she didn't do it and cries. Our other Femme Fatale is a girl named Kara, she's one because she seems to lure in men and makes them do what she wants and when she wants it. Kara seductive actress in the school play and it seems she likes to get her own way.
The setting is normally a old urban area, even the school was. This fits in perfectly with the film noir setting as most of these were urban and crowded by the city. Also the plot for this film was all based on murder just like a film noir would be something to do with crime.
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