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Rian Johnson's 'Brick' Being Released On Blu-Ray For The First Time In The U.S. This May

Brick Blu-ray
By Chris Evangelista/

Believe it or not, Rian Johnson's debut feature Brick has never been released on Blu-ray in America (only in Canada, America's hat). That's about to change. Kino Lorber Studio Classics will be releasing Johnson's high school noir film on Blu-ray in May, and it's going to be loaded with extras. The 2005 film took hard boiled detective tropes (and dialogue) and dropped them into a modern-day high school setting, with incredible results. More on the Brick Blu-ray below.

Some of you have given up on physical media, and that's fine. I refuse to give in. I'll ride this train all the way to the end, baby! And one of the reasons I still love physical media is announcements like this: Brick is finally coming to Blu-ray. I can distinctly remember seeing Brick when it hit theaters in 2005. I'm not sure how I found out about the film – maybe I saw a trailer somewhere. But I clearly recall watching it in one of Philadelphia's Ritz theaters – the theaters that show smaller, indie films. And I remember having my mind blown as it unfolded. I walked out of the theater feel invigorated and alive. "This is why I love movies!" I thought.

Brick

Making his feature debut, writer-director Rian Johnson grafted old-timey slang prevalent in Dashiell Hammet novels onto modern-day high schoolers. It could've easily backfired, or turned into a gimmick. But Johnson and his cast made it work beautifully. Here's the synopsis:

After receiving a frantic phone call from his ex-girlfriend, teenage loner Brendan Frye (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) learns that her dead body has been found. Vowing to solve her murder himself, he must infiltrate high-school cliques that he previously avoided. His search for the truth places him before some of the school's roughest characters, leading to a confrontation with a drug dealer known as "the Pin (Lukas Haas)."

While Brick has long been on DVD in the U.S. (I have it on my shelf right now), it's never been available here on Blu-ray. But thankfully, the film will find its way there on May 7, 2019, released by Kino Lorber.

As the announcement says, the release will be "loaded with extras", in addition to the commentary and deleted scenes included on the original DVD. I'm hoping those extras will be new featurettes created for this release. But even if they're not, I'm just happy to know I can finally own Brick on Blu-ray.

Johnson has gone on to bigger things, as I'm sure you all know. But this year, he's going to return to the detective genre with Knives Out, a star-studded mystery with one killer cast. As for the Brick Blu-ray release, the filmmaker fired off an amusing tweet about the announcement. A tweet which I'm sure has a whole bunch of replies with people screaming about how much they hated The Last Jedi. 

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