"Throw one at me if you want, hash head. I've got all five senses and I slept last night, that puts me six up on the lot of you."

I just watched Brick with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Well, I mean, not with him, although that would be cool. He stars in it, I mean.

It's this neo-noir film; that's what I'd call it. Anyone who's seen a film noir should know what I mean when I say that it was so unrealistic that it didn't even matter anymore, because the dialogue was so snappy. Snappy!

Brick is about teenage detective Brendan, although he's not the kind of teenage detective you would think. He's no Shinichi Kudo. Although that would be awesome. Anyway, Brendan, being the hyper-intelligent teen he so happens to be, takes it upon himself to solve the mystery of who killed his ex-girlfriend.

While I'd seen the last half an hour or so before, I thought it was necessary to see the movie from the beginning. And it was. Everything made sense. Everything paid off nicely. Certain parts that may have seemed unnecessary came back to prove their importance. Lines that made little sense to my actually teen-aged ears ended up making a lot more sense later on. I liked that a lot.

I found myself liking the movie more and more as it went on. At the beginning, I actively disliked it; it was completely unbelievable, Emily (the dead ex) was INCREDIBLY irritating (hate on me for saying this but thank goodness she died at the beginning, even though the circumstances and reasoning were horrible), and the acting of some of the characters (Laura at first and OH MY GOD DODE UGH) was awful and hard to bear. But JGL really sold it. He inhabited that character and he made the movie that much more enjoyable. Once we had a likable, believable main character (although his characterization was slightly confusing; was he cold? Did he love too much? Was he a smart aleck? It was hard to tell) everything fell into place.

The movie, despite its extreme violence (the body count was quite possibly in the double digits; remember, these are high school kids), had some hilarious moments. Kara and the Pin were particularly hilarious. The Pin was our main antagonist, but when you saw him eating a cookie at the breakfast table with Brendan and kissing his mom, sitting on the beach talking about his love for The Hobbit, he was hard not to love. Kara's character was largely pointless but she was so full of herself and fake, dishing out freshmen at every moment who were at her beck and call for everything, I had to laugh. Especially with her Kabuki makeup on.

Brendan's best friend, the Brain, didn't get to do too much on camera, but with his little jacket and his thick glasses, he ended up being one of my favorite characters. He was the loyal best friend we all want to have.

This movie is both extremely violent and very sad, with some funnier moments. JGL pulls in his best performance in any movie not called 500 Days of Summer (even if you didn't like that movie, which thanks to its obnoxious teenage fanbase you very well might not, you have to agree he was good). Well, actually, I haven't seen Mysterious Skin yet. That's supposed to be good. But Manic wasn't worth it (he wasn't, but it's hard to call his performance great when that movie was just so not good), so the award goes to this. The story is fun to follow and while it's not something you can watch mindlessly it won't hit you over the head too much so it's pretty easy to get. Crazy film noir dialogue aside, of course.

Brick gets 4 JGLs running away at insane speeds from "The Lug" out of 5.