Brick (2005)

In writer/director Rian Johnson's directorial debut film - the homage-film told a modern-day film noir or neo-noirish story (with hard-boiled, tough-guy 40s lingo) with a very twisting plot and a flashbacked story. The film's setting was a Southern California high school with a menacing, underworld drug-crime ring. The film's title 'Brick' was a reference to a compressed block of heroin. [Note: in the upcoming story, there was one missing brick that had been stolen - the film's MacGuffin.] The film's themes were scheming double-crosses, murder, jealousy, confused motivations, and unexpected revelations.

The main teenaged hero character, a high-school student loner and outsider, substituted for the detective character found in many film noirs of Dashiell Hammett's hard-boiled novels, and other characters referenced typical criminal noir characters such as mob bosses, femme fatales, and other thugs or killers. Typical of a detective's role in film noir, the male teen attempted to infiltrate into the drug king-pin's circle, to unravel how and why his former girlfriend had been murdered. There were many suspects who would be introduced in this twisting tale of drug dealing and violence, included stoners, jocks, and upper-class elites. Many of the characters were symbolically identified by their individualistic shoe choices.

The low-budget film (only $475,000 dollars) grossed revenue of $2 million (domestic) and $3.9 million (worldwide).

• the film opened with brooding, jilted loner slacker-teenager Brendan Frye (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) staring at the body of his ex-girlfriend Emily Kostach (Emilie de Ravin) near a concrete run-off sewer or storm drain tunnel entrance beneath a freeway

Brendan Frye's Discovery of Ex-Girlfriend Emily's Body at a Storm Drain-Tunnel Entrance

• a note was slipped by her recognizable hand (with the telltale blue bracelet) through Brendan's locker slot; the title screen was presented
• the film then flashbacked to Two Days Previous (to Emily's murder) to provide a contextual backstory -- START OF FLASHBACK --
• Brendan recalled that he had found a note that instructed him to go to a public pay phone at 12:30 pm located at the corner of Sarmentoso & Camino Del Rio (in San Clemente, CA); he received a 15-minute late, but frantic phone call from Emily - his ex-girlfriend of about two months. She was very scared and in trouble, and needed help - after appearing to have associated herself with the wrong crowd ("I screwed up real bad"). She gave him a few sentences with four key words that made no sense at first, except possibly for the word 'brick' that probably referred to bricks of powdery heroin:
  • "Look, I did what she said with the brick. I didn't know it was bad, but The Pin's on it now for poor Frisco, and they're playing it all on me...I think Tug..."
• among her obscure clues were "poor Frisco," "pin," "brick (bad)," and "tug," but then she screamed and abruptly hung up, at a nearby pay phone (without a booth); she was presumably intimidated by the same 2-door 1971 Black Ford Mustang that loudly zoomed by on the main street close to where the two booths were located; Brendan noticed that a cigarette butt was discarded - with a distinctive Blue Arrow design
• Brendan learned from his nerdy schoolfriend, the Brain (Matt O'Leary), a Rubik's-Cube genius, that Emily had begun trying to reach out to a different group to hang out with, such as the upper-crust - the "Ivy-bound cheerleading elite" (led by Laura Dannon and her drug-using, black jock boyfriend Brad Bramish (Brian White)); when that failed, she ended up associating with a small-time drug-dealer - an evil "drama vamp" (another of Brendan's ex-girlfriends named Kara (Meagan Good))
• by his actions, Brendan began to solve the mystery of Emily's disappearance on his own; in her notebook from her locker, Brendan found a ripped piece of red paper; during a rehearsal in the auditorium, he briefly spoke to his hard-hearted ex-girlfriend Kara, a sexy aspiring drama-theater girl, who claimed she was protecting him by not revealing what she knew about Emily; she even propositioned him: "If you're ever looking to get back into things, I could use you"
• in the school's drama dressing room, Brendan discovered an invitation to an upcoming party ("HALLOWEEN IN JANUARY") on red paper that resembled Emily's ripped copy; he called the number on the back, and spoke to Laura Dannon (Nora Zehetner), a snobby, upper-class, rich-girl student; once he mentioned he had Emily's invitation, she divulged the address of the party-event hosted at her house that evening at 9:00 pm (at 15 Busch Street, in Stockton Cove)
• at the exclusive, Halloween costume party held in the Dannon mansion, Brendan listened as the sultry and sophisticated Laura (dressed in a bright-red kimono) entertained guests at a piano with "The Sun Whose Rays Are All Ablaze" - a song from the play "The Mikado"; afterwards, after Brendan wandered upstairs, the sexily-flirtatious Laura followed him and they spoke about how a troubled Emily had gone AWOL from most people, and had experienced a "downfall"; privately, Laura suggested finding Emily at the local cafe Coffee and Pie, Oh My!
• afterwards, Brendan secretly followed the suspicious-acting Laura as she proceeded outside to meet up and speak in the dark with an unstable, volatile-acting Tug (or Tugger) (Noah Fleiss) - a muscular, intimidating, hot-headed enforcer wearing a white-knit cap or beanie; apparently exasperated by Laura's questions about Emily, he protested: "I will not talk about this" and drove off in his ubiquitous black Ford Mustang
• the next day behind the cafe near a dumpster, Brendan confronted stoned, drug-addicted, homeless, greasy hood Dode (Noah Seagan), Emily's latest boyfriend who often met with her near the dumpster behind the cafe; Brendan facetiously told Dode that Kara had told him where Em was located; he claimed that Emily had asked for his help - and it had nothing to do with him being her "jilted ex"; Brendan suddenly punched Dode in the face for his lying insolence, and told Dode to pass a message along to Emily: "Tell Em I wanna see her. Tell her if she wants my help or not, it's her business. But I want to hear it straight from her...Today!"
• Brendan watched from a distance as Emily drove up to Dode in her white 1981 VW Rabbit Convertible and then hugged him; he also saw Dode give her a piece of paper, that she placed in her notepad
• later in the day during his lunch break behind the school, Brendan briefly spoke to Emily who told him - contrary to his understanding, that her distressed "pretty crazy" phone call to him was a mistake ("forget about it"); she urged that it was her decision to go a new direction: "Where I wanna be at is different from where you wanna be at, okay?...I had to get with people. I couldn't handle life with you, anymore"; although he begged for them to reestablish their relationship: ("You gotta come back to me, Em"), she refused: "I don't wanna be put away - and protected...I came here to say goodbye. Okay? For good...You're just gonna let me go. Just let me go"; after she departed, he revealed he had pickpocketed her notepad; he found the hand-scribbled piece of paper that Dode had given her with the word "MIDNIGHT" and a symbol on it

Emily Breaking Up With Brendan After Being Taken in By Drug Gang Members
	Dode's Torn Note Given to Emily - With a Symbol Indicating a Tunnel Meeting Place at Midnight

• after learning earlier from Brain that the symbol might refer to a specific coded location known only to the upper-crust elites, in the middle of the night, Brendan guessed that Dode's note was instructing Emily to meet him at midnight at a sewer storm-drain tunnel entrance; there, he found Emily dead at the location
• --- This was the point in the film when the FLASHBACK ENDED ---
• he pursued after someone he heard in the dark tunnel and was knocked out by his unidentified assailant; in the school library early in the morning, he told Brain about Emily: "I can't let her go, Brain," and he was reluctant to walk away from everything; now in detective mode, Brendan began to investigate the crime, and asked for Brain's help to "op" for him, rather than contacting the authorities; the two schemed for Brendan to infiltrate the local drug gang and root out other involved students ("the real players")
• Brendan experienced a brief flashback to a similar situation when 3 months earlier, he had appeared to jealously rat out his drug-dealing friend named Jerr Madison to the school's VP disciplinarian, possibly since Jerr was involved with Emily; he remembered vowing to Emily: "You're the only thing I love!", although she resisted and didn't agree to his unwanted over-protectiveness: ("I'm in a different world now. And you can't keep me out of it"); Brendan returned to the tunnel and hid Emily's body
• Brendan then shared the four words that Emily had referred to in her frantic phone, and the only one recognizable to Brain was the word "Pin" - a reference to a drug-dealing ("king-pin") boss known as the Pin; Emily had become a drug-user herself and was involved in some way with the drug-running dope-dealer; in fact, The Pin (Lukas Haas) was a menacing 26 year-old drug dealer who lived in town
• in the school's parking lot, Brendan picked a fight with popular jock Brad (Laura's boyfriend), a known drug-user, in order to deliberately attract the attention of the Pin; afterwards, Laura suggested to Brendan: "I wanna help you," but he rejected her offer; he accused her of being "a player" that he couldn't trust; Brendan realized that Brad was only a "sap" and not regarded as powerful in the drug-hierarchy; on school grounds, Brendan also had a brief physical altercation with the beanie-wearing Tug, who slugged him twice and knocked him out
• the bruised, swollen-faced Brendan was seated in the office of the high school's Assistant Vice Principal Gary Trueman (Richard Roundtree); the VP regarded Brendan as a clean and "good kid" who was an "asset" to the office, due to previously ratting out Jerr; Brendan refused to be taken advantage of: "I'm not your inside line, and I'm not your boy," but then made a deal with the VP, asking for a few weeks without interference to go about an important search that might bring trouble ("heat"); the VP agreed - with a disclaimer: "There better be some meat at the end of this, like you say. Or at least a fall guy. Or you're it"
• as Brendan was leaving school to return home, Brendan noticed the suspicious black Mustang in the mostly empty parking lot; he threatened to break into it and damage it with a large concrete block; the provoked car's owner Tug strutted over and slugged Brendan three times; Brendan pressured Tug to take him to meet Tug's employer - the "Pin". Tug reluctantly drove Brendan in his Mustang's trunk to Pin's address, to keep him from knowing its whereabouts (Brendan peeked anyway, noticing a "tacky mailbox" with a small eagle on top, located at 1250 Vista Blanca)

Brendan to Tug (seated in his black Mustang): "I want to see the Pin"	Brendan Led Into Pin's Presence in His Home's Basement
The Pin (Lukas Haas) - A Menacing King-Pin Drug Dealer	Laura - Revealed to Be One of the Pin's Associates, Hiding Out in the House

• Tug led Brendan (with his face covered) into a basement of a local house (the "Pin" lived with his mother!), and was ushered into the Pin's presence; the "Pin" had a club-foot, wore a black cape, walked with a limp and carried a duck-handled cane; the "Pin' knew that Brendan had been "sniffing" him out, and had already fought against one of his best drug-buying clients Brad; Brendan counter-threatened to turn in the "Pin's" location ("the biggest dope port in the burgh") to the school's VP; Tug grabbed Brendan and began to strangle him, but then Laura, one of Pin's associates, entered and ordered him to stop
• after regaining consciousness after a long night in a dark room where Brendan had been held by Tug, the Pin realized that Brendan had not been intimidated by him, and that Laura had intervened on his behalf: ("So Laura talked me down"); by breakfast time in the home's upstairs kitchen, the Pin's mother (Reedy Gibbs) offered gang members juice; Brendan was given a second chance by the Pin to explain what he was doing there; Brendan offered his "services" to Pin's drug operation, to not rat him out, but to provide information about his drug-dealing competition, or alert him about the school authorities. The Pin replied that Brendan would either be hired or beaten up by the end of the next day: "I'll have my boys check your tale, and seeing how it stretches, we'll either rub or hire you"
• after the meeting with The Pin, Brendan was driven back to the high school by the conniving Laura; even though she offered to help his search, Brendan began to distrust the deeply-involved Laura ever more: ("Less now than when I didn't trust you before. Maybe if you can tell me your angle in all this, I could"); she informed him that the now-'hooked' Emily had allegedly stolen one of Pin's "bricks" of heroin three months earlier, after being rejected by the crowd that Laura was associated with (Pin's operation); Laura tried to insinuate that Brendan shouldn't have become so emotionally-strung out with Emily ("Loving some girl like she's all there is, anywhere, to you"), who had "dug deep" and was addicted with "dirty habits she wasn't strong enough to control"; Brendan walked off after calling Laura "dangerous" (the film's femme fatale)
• Brendan briefly spoke with Kara in her dressing room, where he asked her to divulge information about Emily's latest boyfriend Dode: ("I need to hear Dode's tale about Emily"), but she wasn't cooperative; Brendan knew that Dode was a crucial character, since he had passed the note to Emily about meeting at the tunnel just before her death; Brendan surmised that the manipulative Kara now had Dode "under her thumb"
• the next day at school, Brendan was able to fend off a knife attack by a drug-dealer identified as Chuck Burns [Note: Later, it was revealed that the assailant had been hired by Brad to settle a grudge against Brendan: ("Turns out Brad Bramish hired him on his own. It was just a grudge thing").]
• the "Pin" pulled up in a chauffeured mini-van; Brendan was told that he had been hired to work for Pin's drug gang; at the same time, Brendan received a phone-booth call from the accusatory Dode who claimed that he saw Brendan suspiciously hide Emily's body after finding it in the tunnel; he threatened to use the information against him: ('Anyone I tell, it would ruin you some way. And I'm gonna tell someone")
• later in the day, Brendan was informed by Brain about a newspaper article describing the 'death' of Frisco Farr - the incident was related to Emily's hint about "poor Frisco" who was in a 3-week coma after an accidental dose from an impure brick of heroin ("Bad junk, bad brick"); Brain also shared a newspaper report concerning the mysterious disappearance of Emily
• Brendan snuck into Pin's home, and in Pin's basement-office, he located wads of cash in the back of a desk drawer; in another dark area, he found a white powdery brick of heroin; Tug discovered him snooping around, but Brendan was able to get Tug to side with him against the Pin; Tug suspected that he was going to be betrayed by the Pin
• in the upstairs kitchen of the house, Tug provided more information to Brendan about Pin's recent drug purchase - he had bought 10 kilos (or bricks) of heroin; eight of them were immediately sold wholesale; the 10th brick was the one in the basement; the 9th one disappeared and was returned, but "it came back bad"; it was discovered that it had been contaminated with deadly laundry soap; it was the one that accidentally killed "poor Frisco"; when Brendan mentioned the name of the missing girl Emily Kostach, Tug claimed (deceitfully) that he didn't know her; a few moments later after the Pin entered the kitchen, he stated: "Emily used to be Tug's girl" - Brendan realized that Tug had lied to him
• by this time after being repeatedly beaten up, Brendan was swallowing a lot of blood and was becoming delirious; just before a 4 pm meeting set to begin at the tunnel, Dode confronted Brendan in the middle of the football field, and again accused Brendan of hiding Emily's corpse; Brendan insisted: "I didn't kill her, Dode" and also asked: "Before I got there. Did you see who killed her?"; Dode revealed he was in cahoots with Kara: "Me and Kara, we're gonna bury you, and we're gonna get paid doing it, dig?"
• a crucial admission came from Dode, after Brendan asked him about Emily's fears: "Why was she scared, Dode?" - Dode finally told how he believed that Emily was pregnant with his baby when she died; he also continued to assert that Brendan had killed her out of jealousy:
  • "You couldn't stand it, your little Em. She was gonna keep it, it was mine, and you couldn't stand that...I loved her, and I would've loved that kid. I'm gonna bury you!"
• shortly later, during a very tense meeting-confrontation at the sewer tunnel at 4:00 pm between Tug, the Pin, Dode and Brendan, Dode demanded to be paid off in exchange for information about Emily's killer and where her body was located; Brendan was being publically accused of Emily's murder by Dode, but Brendan again denied the false allegation; Dode hinted to everyone that someone "very close" to Emily had killed her - Brendan - and that his jealousy over her pregnancy was the motive:
  • "She had a kid in her and he couldn't stand it."
• it was expected that Tug would attack Brendan, but instead he went beserk, assaulted Dode, and then shot and killed him at point-blank range in the head; the sound of the gun blast echoed throughout the tunnel; after fainting at the sewer tunnel, shortly later, Brendan woke up in Tug's home bedroom; Tug was explaining to him his belief, although untrue, that Emily was pregnant with his own child; he had also dated and been romantically involved with Emily; Laura had convinced him that the child wasn't his, but he still thought about it: "I still think sometimes. I think about it being true, about it being mine"; Tug divulged that a drug-war against the Pin was about to break out
• Brendan met up with Kara (wearing kabuki makeup) in the school's dressing room and accused her of being a "scheming tramp" who set up Dode to be killed by Tug: "You set that poor kid up. You held Dode like a card till you could play him...You got Dode thinking Em had his kid, thinking I did it, and that was enough for him"; she speculated about other possibilities: "It probably wasn't Dode's kid. It might have been Tug's kid"
• later in the evening, Brendan left the school and proceeded to Pin's house, where he briefly discussed with Pin how a gang-war was brewing; Pin suggested that Tug was the one who had killed Emily, and he was still hot-headed and panicky; Laura appeared and volunteered to drive Brendan back to Tug's house, where Brendan stressed how Tug should attend a peace-making "pow-wow" with the Pin later that evening
• Laura comforted the grieving Brendan, and they had sex together (off-screen); afterwards, Brendan observed that she was smoking the distinctive cigarette brand that matched the discarded butt earlier in the film, just before Emily's disappearance; he became even more suspicious of her involvement, because he soon learned that Tug didn't smoke cigarettes
• another meeting of gang members was set to occur at 4:00 AM in Pin's house to sort things out between the surviving principal characters; Brendan set up a volatile situation by ordering Brain to phone the cops at 4:15 AM with a fake report that drugs were in the back of Tug's car parked outside - he had actually planted Emily's corpse in the trunk so that her death would be blamed on Tug
• the meeting began with Pin demanding from Tug that he had to keep his name clean: ("I want full assurance that any heat from Emily and Dode is on just you"); Pin also mentioned that he wanted to sell the 10th brick of heroin, but first needed to be assured that it was pure; when a search for the 10th brick determined that it was missing: ("The brick is gone!"), both Tug and Pin accused each other of a double-cross; Tug beat Pin to death before he was gunned down by the arriving police who arrived as scheduled to witness an erupting massacre of lethal gang warfare and gun fire
• in the early morning hours on the football field, Laura described to Brendan the "slaughterhouse" that she had played a part in orchestrating and setting up due to the missing last brick of heroin; when he falsely claimed he wasn't there, she described the aftermath: six were found dead, including the Pin and Tug, eliminating all the major players, although Brendan was able to escape the carnage; Tug was rightfully revealed as Emily's killer - and also as Dode's murderer:
  • "The papers say six dead, three around the house, girl in the back of Tug's car [Emily's body] and The Pin and Tug. Tug tried to shoot his way out when the police got there. They tied him to Dode, too. Same gun. And the girl."

During Their Final Confrontation, Brendan with the Conniving Femme Fatale Laura

• then Brendan disclosed that he knew about Laura's double-dealing with the doctored 9th brick, the missing 10th heroin brick, and Emily's death, when he told her: "It's not finished"
  • although Tug took the fall for Emily's actual death ("Tug pulled the trigger on Em, and he got the fall for it"), Brendan was pretty certain that Laura had "put her in front of the gun" - he bluntly blamed her: "That was you, angel...It was you"
  • Laura had also stolen the 9th brick from The Pin, took half of it, and doctored up the remainder ("cut it back bad") with a poisonous substitute that killed Frisco, and then Laura had set up the insecure Emily to take the blame for its doctoring and theft: ("You frame her for the bad brick")
  • Laura had been driving Tug's Mustang zooming by during Brendan's phone call with Emily in the film's opening, and she abruptly hung up after she saw Laura in the driver's seat: ("Tug's car driving by, The Pin riding shotgun....She saw the driver's side. She saw you. She saw you, and she ran like she saw some devil")
  • the Pin had urged Emily to meet up with Tug, whom Laura had "talked up"; when Emily told him that she was pregnant with Tug's baby, supposedly to "soften him up," Laura knew it would have the opposite effect on him - Tug reacted in a panic and killed Emily; Brendan accused the complicit Laura of the murder: "She took the hit for you and you let her take it."
  • Brendan also concluded that Laura had taken the 10th and final brick, to instigate the massacre at the Pin's house; to incriminate her, Brendan planted the remaining brick in her locker and notified the authorities
• Brendan told Laura that he had tipped off the Assistant VP Gary Trueman with a note about her and Brad's drug involvement with The Pin, and how she had stolen the 10th brick; he mentioned how she would be found guiltless if nothing was found in her locker. A cut-away showed Laura's locker being searched by the authorities and the discovery of a white powdery brick - proving that she had in fact stolen the last brick
• to retaliate and spite Brendan during their final confrontation - after a tight clinch together, she mentioned that his conclusions were mostly correct: ("Well, that's most of it. Nine out of 10") - but that he had missed one thing
• the vindictive and mean-spirited Laura then told Brendan that Emily was three months pregnant, already showing, and didn't love the father (and was seeking an abortion); she implied that Brendan was the father: "Do you know whose kid that makes it? Or have you known all along?" - she walked off
• Brain appeared and asked Brendan what Laura had just whispered in his ear: "What'd she whisper to you?"; the film's last line was Brain's change of heart about knowing the "dirty word" ["Mother----" or "Motherkiller!"]: "All right, you don't have to tell me"