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R | 1h 39m | Action, Thriller | Oct. 18, 2024
“The Silent Hour” has the same plot as almost any Bruce Willis “Die Hard” movie, where the basic premise is about being heavily outnumbered and outgunned by bad guys, and trying to survive a prolonged attack in a confined space. After a lukewarm start, “The Silent Hour” gets the job done rather admirably if not particularly memorably.
Dealing With Deafness
Detective Frank Shaw (Joel Kinnaman), when we first meet him, is annoyingly macho. Trying to be a cowboy cop and a hero, chasing a bad guy with a gun through a maze of shipping containers, he ends up getting viciously cracked on the noggin. His ability to hear evaporates.
A year later, he’s back on the job with permanent hearing damage. Obviously, this massive setback makes him a much less effective law enforcement officer.
Not being remotely suited to being a police station desk jockey, Frank’s ready to retire, when one last case presents itself. He and his former partner Doug Slater (Mark Strong), who’s now in Vice Squad, are sent to get a statement from a witness of a gangland execution of a couple of drug dealers.
Why Frank, who can’t hear? Because the witness is also deaf, and the precinct interpreter is not available. Frank’s been studying sign language. He’s hasn’t been particularly diligent about it and is far from fluent or comfortable, but as Doug points out, Frank’s their only option.
Ava
The witness, Ava (Sandra Mae Frank), a photographer and recovering drug addict, lives in a condemned, mostly empty building plastered with eviction protest signs (the skeevy landlord is evicting the entire building’s worth of tenants). Protest death metal blares from one apartment at high decibel levels.
While getting the statements in dribs and drabs, with Frank looking like he’s playing charades, Ava reveals that she recorded the shooting on her phone. Great—all good–that’s a wrap. The detectives leave; Frank gets half way home and realizes he’s forgotten his phone in Ava’s apartment and has to circle back.
Frank discovers Ava about to be euthanized by bad guys and manages to throw a monkey wrench in their deadly plans. Frank and Ava narrowly escape death, and now, sans mobile and landline service, they have to rely solely on a combo of Ava’s lip reading and Frank’s subpar signing, to prevail against an entire crew of bad guys.
Obviously Not a New Plot Device
The film grows on you. What ultimately makes this film work is deaf actress Sandra Mae Frank. Like Marlee Matlin before her, she’s wonderfully expressive and has enough charisma and likeability to carry the film all by herself. And once you manage to forget how annoying the non-handicapped Frank was at the outset, he becomes very sympathetic. Joel Kinnaman is kind of a poor man’s Aaron Eckhart, with the fair hair and cleft chin, but lacks Eckhart’s intensity.
Mark Strong as Shaw’s partner is always good, and Mekhi Phifer as the head bad guy reminds one why he’s always a good casting choice, in any situation.
My main takeaway from “The Silent Hour” are the lessons Ava signs to Frank about how to learn to live with deafness. Just because he’s missing one part, it doesn’t have to mean all of him is therefore diminished. She describes how she’s an annual attendee of the Boston Pops, and goes, obviously not to hear the music, but to watch the musicians play and the reactions on the audience’s faces. The lack of one sense heightens the remaining ones to near supernormal abilities. That’s a very fine life lesson.
‘The Silent Hour’
Director: Brad Anderson
Starring: Joel Kinnaman, Mark Strong, Sandra Mae Frank, Mekhi Phifer
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 39 minutes
Release Date: Oct. 11, 2024
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
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