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TEEN 'TEC: Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Brick's gumshoe.

Brendan first appears looking—through his glasses—at the corpse of his onetime girlfriend Emily (Emilie de Ravin). He looks sad, yes, but he's also disconcertingly cool. From here, the film cuts back to "two days previous," when Brendan gets a note from Em, left in his locker. Arriving at a roadside phone booth, he listens as the love of his life is apparently confronted by something terrible. She screams, he's helpless. And his investigation is on.

Aided in his quest by the Brain (Matt O'Leary)—who does Internet research and calls in from his mom's cell phone (here's something new: high school students who are not gizmoed out the wazoo)—Brendan learns Em was mixed up with the cool kids ("Who's she eating with?" he asks), crossed someone and ended up "in trouble." When he does find her, the encounter is almost anticlimactic: She rejects his fretful possessive-boyness ("I really loved you a lot," she says, "I couldn't stand it"), and he discovers that she's "been with" other boys. Her new friends include drug dealers and thugs, just the sort of kids who make ex-boyfriends jealous.

Because he's a noir hero, Brendan solicits occasional info from a couple of femme fatales: the vacuous Laura (Nora Zehetner) and cheerleader/actress Kara (Meagan Good), whose ritual training of freshmen to do her bidding makes her seem equal parts Vampira and Bull Durham's Annie Savoy. Kara performs her untrustworthiness in Sally Bowles or kabuki drag, usually framed in front of her dramatic dressing-room mirror. She's trouble, and Brendan knows it.

While Brendan's plot is mostly generic, the execution is lively and deft. Edited on a Mac in writer-director Rian Johnson's bedroom and winner of a 2005 Sundance award for "originality of vision," Brick loves the harsh angle (Steve Yedlin's camera is low, skewed, too close in long, predominantly stationary setups) and blackout editing. The spaces are fragmented, making the puzzle of high school seem literal. At times, Brendan's body itself is a puzzle, as he steps into bully-beatings, his pretty face smashed repeatedly, kicks and jabs fortified by big-fat throwdown sound effects, until he starts to resemble Dick Powell, pounded into unconsciousness in Murder, My Sweet (or, more pointedly, Gabriel Byrne in Miller's Crossing, the flashpoint for Johnson's Hammett fetish).

This abuse sometimes leads Brendan to see poorly, as when he first meets local drug kingpin, The Pin (Lukas Haas). The frame is blurred, as you share Brendan's lack of glasses. He puts them on as The Pin rises to face him, dark cape and polished, duck-headed cane enhancing his calculated odiousness. The Pin lives at home with his mom, who makes sure the kids have juice and oatmeal cookies for snacks, then leaves them to their nefarious business.

One such session is conducted at the kitchen table with a ceramic, chicken-shaped pitcher included in most every shot. This chicken provides a particularly antic moment for The Pin's very dedicated muscle, Tugger (Noah Fleiss, in a perversely, frankly brilliant performance). Believing that Brendan needs schooling at the table, Tugger lifts the chicken, glowers and threatens to mash Brendan's face, then takes a breath and stalks off, chicken in hand. The camera remains at tabletop level, watching the chicken disappear then reappear, as Tugger remembers to place it back where he found it. You don't need to see Tugger's face here to know what he's thinking—his arm and torso are that expressive.

Cast as the fall-guy gun thug, Tugger drives a dark, loud Mustang and brings a welcome warmth and comedy to this hard-boily movie. At first he seems something of an anomaly, his bulky form clad in white knit cap, wife-beater and big ol' skater jeans. But as his vulnerability emerges, and is exploited differently by Brendan and The Pin, Tugger's difference looks almost poignant. This effect is brilliantly, briefly crystallized in a single moment at Tugger's home, where he's surrounded by a family made up of figures just like his, all hulking in front of the TV set. It's an abrupt shift in perspective, and reminds you that this is exactly what high school (or noir) is about. You never know where someone's coming from.

Brick

Written and directed by Rian Johnson A Focus Features relese Opens Friday at Ritz Five