Dark, brooding characters in serious trouble. Girls who wear melodrama as thick as their make-up. Simple-minded thugs looking for jaws to bust. Impenetrable fast-lipped jargon. Yes, film noir and high school seem to be the perfect match.

Loner geek Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) pines for an ex-girlfriend. Getting mixed up in the wrong crowd does more than ruin her social standing, as Brendan finds out when he discovers her body lying in an underpass. He barely takes time to grieve as he pursues the people who killed her, putting himself in the same circumstances that led to her death. This means facing plenty of dangerous characters and constant beat-downs, which help him escape his emotional pain and convince his enemies that he’s serious about going in deep. It’s a world of over-exaggerated style, with trenchcoat-decked tough guys playing drug lords, and bold girls playing world-weary sirens. The high school setting suits the theatricality of it all, full of kids eager to look mature and invincible. The occasional interruption of this fantasy world by someone’s mom offering breakfast cereal is hilarious and shows the fragility of the staged reality.

For the most part Brick succeeds at staying true to classic 1940s detective elements, offering a unique slant on high school drama. The weak link for me is Brenda’s unlikely combination of scrawny nerdiness and street-savvy confidence, holding his own against testosterone-fueled jocks. But the cynicism and back-stabbing will ring true to anyone who remembers navigating those halls of lockers.

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