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Director:
Rian Johnson
Cast:
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lukas Haas, Nora Zehetner, Emilie De Ravin,
Noah Fleiss |
MPAA Rating:
R for sexuality, language and some
drug use. |
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Review:
 After
waiting a couple of years on a shelf somewhere, one of the weirder
teen movies to come out in the '00z is finally out. The question
is whether or not this is a good idea, and compared to a lot of
things in “genre” it definitely is.
The gag of the film is that the kids are contemporary and the
dialogue is out of 1940s pulp. The characters speak in a jargon so
dated that it's hard to understand at times, but by the end you
know what's going on, and while perplexed, it's rather satisfying.
Brendan(Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is either a junior or senior in high
school. His girlfriend Emily(Emilie de Ravin) has left him for a
loser named Dode(Noah Segan), who thinks he's cool dresses in
leather and takes lots of drugs.
Suddenly, Emily is in trouble, and after a mysterious encounter
with our hero by telephone and in a drive-by, she winds up dead
just outside a tunnel. So whodunit? Brenden and his sidekick The
Brain(Matt O'Leary) are on the case, but there are the usual
distractions, as badass jock Brad(Brian White) thinks that he's
really after the affections of the rich and seductive Kara(Meagan
Good), and thus wants to kill him, VP Trueman(Richard Roundtree)
wants our hero to be his spy, and a mysterious drug kingpin(Lukas
Haas), who still lives with his mother, and his brutish number two
namedTugger(Noah Fleiss) don't want Brian screwing their racket
up.
The film plays out like any pulp detective story, the clueless mom
in the 'pin's house is really disconcerting, but as a minor action
flick, it does what it's supposed to.
Eric Lurio
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