Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has been contacted by his ex-girlfriend Emily (Emilie de Ravin), who hasn’t been seen for a few weeks. Emily is asking Brendan for help via a call to a pay phone when she abruptly ends her phone call to him. Brendan begins looking for her by starting with her current boyfriend, stoner Dode (Noah Segan). Dode is wary of helping him and for good reason. Brendan set up their mutual friend Jerr to be arrested by the police in the hopes of severing Emily’s involvement in drugs, but it only pushed her away. Dode obliges and the former couple meet, ending with Emily asking Brendan to disregard their last conversation. Brendan steals Emily’s notebook and follows the information inside to her dead body. He hides it, not wanting the authorities to encroach on his efforts to avenge her death. Enlisting his friend The Brain (Matt O’Leary), Brendan traces Emily’s involvement with another young woman (Nora Zehetner) and a local twenty-six year-old drug lord, The Pin (Lukas Haas).
Stylistically, this can be a difficult film to follow. It relies on the tropes of classic film noir, especially fast-paced, slang-heavy dialogue. I love that because it forces the audience today attention. The movie doesn’t dumb itself down. The visuals are great, maintaining a muted color scheme and accented by great chiaroscuro.
Why put a classic film noir setup in high school? That’s the question I was left with after watching this film. Any number of alternate settings could have worked, but director Rian Johnson decided to move the action among teenagers. It’s about the protagonist losing his naïveté. Not his innocence, because this is not a coming-of-age movie: these characters are far from innocent. Brendan’s journey is to an emotional, not moral or ethical adulthood. Set in another world (sports, business) I don’t know that it could have had the same effect.
4.5/5
Brian's Film Log 