You know that part in A Charlie Brown Christmas special where Lucy dispatches Charlie and Linus on a trek to secure a “big, shiny aluminum tree.” The flow of the film then sort of derails as Charlie Brown wanders through that abstract, drug-induced Christmas tree lot and that meandering piano psuedo-melody comes in. Up until that point, the scheme of the movie was pretty clear: Christmas was coming up, everyone was in the Holiday Spirit, and preparing for the annual play. That whole Christmas tree search scene is almost like the Rob Zombie animated peyote hallucination part in Beavis and Butthead Do America, where the presented reality of the film dissipates, and then reforms later on. But in Charlie Brown’s case, its roundabout, oblique piano, rather than industrial heavy-metal.
That off the wall Charlie Brown Christmas tree hunt is pretty much what the entire duration of Brick feels like. I can't say if it’s Rian Johnson’s use of perplexing, neo-noir, slang-heavy dialogue, J. Gordon-Levitt’s undemonstrative performance, or Nathan Johnson’s soundtrack. But it just feels surreal. My advice to people about to view Brick is “expect to be confused, but just go with it.”
Overall, it’s a compelling re-hashing of the classic Hollywood crime drama, that at times comes off as a little gimmicky, but once you realize Rian Johnson’s not using a southern California high school as the setting to pander to The O.C. crowd, but rather to throw the seasoned, seen-it-all, veteran off their game, it's quite gripping. Plus, how can I disagree with a laudable protagonist named Brendan? Thumbs Up!
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