Character driven and smartly crafted, The Silent Hour was an unexpected surprise.
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I honest to goodness thought I had seen this movie before. We've got an action thriller starring Joel Kinnamen who loses one of his primary senses and then does some action movie heroics. And we've got "Silent" in the title. This is that John Woo movie right? No that was Silent Night, a different movie where Joel Kinnamen plays a cop who loses his ability to speak. The Silent Hour is about Kinnamen as a cop that looses his ability to hear and has to keep a young hearing impaired woman safe from a bunch of crooked cops and criminals. At this rate, Kinnamen is going to be in another movie this year called Blind Justice, where he plays a cop that loses his sight. Though as much as I'm joking, I liked this movie a lot more than I thought I would.
The Setup
Kinnamen plays Frank Shaw, a hotshot detective whose life is upended when he suffers a massive head trauma pursuing a suspect. Now deaf, save for some hearing aids, Frank is struggling to adjust to his new reality and feels useless in his job. Which is why his former partner, Mark Strong's Doug Slater, decides to bring Frank along as an ASL translator for a potential murder witness. But when Frank returns to the witness and accidentally interrupts an attempt on her life, this unlikely pair will have to work together to survive the night.
It's so weird for me to watch a movie like this, more or less on the heels of something like Silent Night and to find myself liking the more grounded, character-oriented one. Not that I think Silent Night is terrible, but The Silent Hour just works better in terms of premise and themes.
The movie has a nice dual hook in it which is this cat and mouse thriller where Frank and the murder witness Ava, are trying to survive a parade of corrupt cops that are trying to get rid of Ava quietly to avoid further questions, and that Frank is having a personal crisis, feeling useless without his hearing. Especially now that his hearing aids are out of juice and both he and Ava can't hear.
And I'm so so so so so so glad that Ava is played by a deaf actress. Obviously it would be ideal for Joel Kinnamen's role to be played by a deaf actor. But having his disability be new to him and having someone his character underestimates (she's an addict in recovery) show him that he's both capable of adapting and doing his job is a really nice touch. And Sandra Mae Frank gives an excellent performance and functions are the movie's emotional core/heart.
Most of the movie's best scenes are when Frank and Ava bond, either by Ava forcing Frank to open up about his pain/trauma related to his hearing loss or Frank demonstrates the baseline humanity and moral sensibilities his compatriots in the police force do not.
The movie also gives itself a smart limitation to maintain the tension. The crooked cops don't want to murder Ava. The action is taking place in a run down low-income housing building where said cops are aiding a mass eviction and illegal removal of the residents. Which means the people they're actually reporting to, don't want a murder, because the witness is on the record and her showing up dead right after invites more questions. That also provides the avenue that will allow Frank and Ava to escape, because the more noise and attention at this building, the better their chances.
So everyone is trying to avoid using firearms and even when they do it's chaotic and almost no one's hitting anything or anyone. Much more grounded and realistic and it works really well.
I also thoroughly enjoy how Frank and Ava being deaf is both a limitation (in terms of options of them trying to get help) and also a possible asset. For instance, calling for help on a landline isn't very fruitful for them and Frank gives away their position once or twice by stepping on something crunchy. At the same time, Frank and Ava being more or less immune to noise, means they have a lot of easy distraction techniques that will work on the cops but not them.
Action wise, this is also pretty grounded/chaotic and bare bones. While I can see why it's called an action thriller, said action is pretty limited to messy skirmishes between Frank and a single opponent where the real goal isn't to outfight but to outsmart. So not for the genre fans, but I think stitches in nicely with the movies grounded vibe.
One of the best compliments I can give a movie like this is that its tropey or cliched moments still work. There's about 2-3 moments that I saw coming a mile away, but I didn't care because I was invested in the story and these two characters. Means the movie did it's job.
The Verdict: Simple and Effective
Character driven and smartly crafted, The Silent Hour was an unexpected surprise. 7/10
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