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I have read all Raymond Chandler’s books, some of them several times, but if you asked me for a synopsis of any of them I think I’d be stumped. I can remember scenes (the stifling orchid house, the blanketed old man in the wheelchair) and dialogue (‘She’d make a jazzy weekend, but she’d be wearing for a steady diet’) but not the plot. This film has had rather the same effect: I watched the credits roll four hours ago, and already its plot is blurring at the edges.
It’s not surprising: Brick is a detective story, a film noir, an homage to films like The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, Chinatown and The Long Goodbye. A baffling plot and an incomprehensible lingo are therefore de rigueur, as is the clutch of archetypes: a washed-up corpse, a loner who plays detective, a mysterious beauty behind the wheel of a convertible, and a hired thug wearing a wifebeater’s vest.
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