10 Greatest Neo-Noir Films Of The 21st Century

While many of the films on this list take inspiration from hardboiled noir of the ‘40s and ‘50s, Brick is the only one to truly pastiche the style. It’s a quick sell: Sam Spade in high school, complete with the terse dialogue and quips that writers like Dashiel Hammett and Raymond Chandler perfected in their novels.

It could easily be twee, cute, or downright annoying, but it’s not, due to writer/director Rian Johnson’s smart decision to make this a properly adult proposition. It’s set in and around a high school, but the story is full of murder, betrayal, and drugs (the disappearance of a titular “brick” of heroin being the impetus for the plot).

It’s buoyed further by Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s breakthrough performance as Brendan. Like any great noir detective, he takes his lumps, getting battered from pillar to post as he tries to uncover the murder mystery, but he gets up every time, slowly piecing together the twisting case.

The young actors relish the chance to tear into the sparkling noir dialogue and Johnson uses his small budget to his advantage, keeping the cast tight and fully investing in each one of his characters.