You know, for a neo-noir film set in a modern day high school with teenage actors who talk like they’re in a 1940′s detective movie…this actually works.

Handled with any less earnestness and honesty, the whole thing would simply come across as a spoof. Every detail is here: the dame, the thugs, the hero, the kingpin. Fast-paced dialogue that’s short on exposition yet laden with meaning. A murder. A mystery.

“I was just going to come up with some bit of information, or set up some phony deal. And I think she’d let me walk. Then I was going to go to the vice principal and spill the in the street address of the biggest dope port in the burg.”

Like in a Peanut’s cartoon, the characters inhabit a world that is almost entirely devoid of adults. They exist, of course, but they exist outside the world of the teenager. Much of the movie takes place around their high school, but it serves to function more as a neighborhood than a place of learning. Each subset of high school culture fills in the different hang-outs, and no one seems to actually go to class. The only significant adult presence comes from the vice principle in the role of The Brass.

“No more of these informal chats! If you have a disciplinary issue with me, write me up or suspend me and I’ll see you at the Parent-Teacher conference.”

A lot of teen movies derive their tension and intensity from common experiences that aren’t really such a big deal: dating, popularity, making the football team. Instead of being a movie about things that feel like a matter of life and death, here we have a movie with teens that really is about life and death. Brick ultimately works because it is solid and well written. It has just the right levels of intensity and self-awareness to keep it away from being a gimmick and steer it instead toward being a great film.