By Sabrina Cognata

This is a movie I actually enjoy, but the people I watched it with absolutely disagree with me and think I am an idiot.  For the record I do not disagree with them at all, but I cannot help but be amused with this neo-noir film.  It’s set in a Southern California high school.  Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a high school junior, gets a frantic call from his ex-girlfriend flipping out at him, and then she mysteriously fades away.  Eventually, she tracks him down and she says that she wants him to let her go because she’s gotten in too deep.  Most of what she says is cryptic and vague.  Before she leaves, she drops a piece of paper out of her notebook.  It has a creepy symbol with a time on it.

Brendan goes to his friend, The Brain (Matt O’Leary) says the upper crust actually use symbols representing locations to initiate meeting places.  Brendan says that she also said the words Pin, Brick and Tug.  The Brain says that Brick means nothing to him, Pin is known as the drug kin-pin in town, and Tug could be a drink or perhaps a sophomore with the nickname Tugger (Noah Fleiss).  Brendan tells The Brain that they should not meet in public anymore as he plans to infiltrate the group of friends that Emily (Emilie de Ravin), his ex-girlfriend, was involved with. 

While in bed Brendan figures out what the symbol represents he shows up there at dawn to find Emily, dead.  He drags her body into the tunnel to hide it until he can figure out who did this to her and make them pay, but then he hears someone else in the tunnel and that person decks him in the face and takes off running.  Not for sure if he was attacked by the killer or a bystander Brendan takes things more seriously than ever and approaches Tugger with the intention of meeting Pin (Lukas Haas).  After confronting Tugger and getting a beating, Tugger drags Brendan to meet the Pin.  Meanwhile, enter the femme fatale, Laura (Nora Zehetner), shows up and begins to charm the pants off both Brendan and the Brain, who both fear and revere her.


Cleverly, Johnson has the view of the initial meeting between Brendan and the Pin blurred as Brendan fumbles to find his glasses and put them on his face.  Brendan talks his way into the Pins favor, even though, the Pins’s hired muscle, Tugger wants to continue to pummel him.  Overtime, Brendan realizes that Emily had been sleeping with Tugger as well as a local stoner named Dode (Noah Segan).  Dode happens to be the person that saw Brendan drag the body into sewer.  Dode also contacts the Pin to tell him about Brendan, during the meeting Dode says that he knew Emily was pregnant with his baby and this sets Tugger off and he shoots Dode because he thinks Dode saw him hit Emily and accidentally kill her. 

I hope you caught all that because it’s actually that confusing.  After that, Brendan sets up Tugger and the Pin for the Brick, which is actually a massive amount of heroin that may or may not be heroin as the other brick was cut poorly and ends up killing someone, and is actually of no consequence to you.  In the end the bad guys get caught and Brendan has to exercise moral flexibility in order to make things right.  It’s the plight of your typical film noir protagonist.  In the end, Brendan realizes that Laura is the common link connecting all the problems. 


Earlier, Emily confides in her that she’s pregnant and tells Dode it’s his even thought it’s actually Brendan’s.  Laura, who actually stole the other brick of heroin, cuts it poorly when she returns what’s left and it, accidentally making her responsible for the death of her friend and a major loss of the Pins profits.  Emily also happens to be the only person about this and in order to cover her ass Laura decides to get rid of Emily.  She tells Emily to confront Tugger to get money, knowing that Tugger would flip out and probably kill her.  Brendan calls Laura out on the entire thing—she pleads with him to listen to her, but he says it’s too late as he’s left a letter to the principal explaining everything and she’ll get her own in the end.