Brad Anderson's The Silent Hour is a taut, watchable thriller with pleasantly predictable genre beats. It's also a nuanced and thoughtful take on disability and deafness, which was not predictable at all. The film starts as a typical cop drama; Frank (Joel Kinnaman) is your familiar righteous cowboy homicide detective.
But his righteous cowboying rides him right into an accident where he badly damages both his ears. He is frustrated by the way his disability impacts his job, and he's thinking of quitting the force. Then his former partner (Mark Strong) asks him to act as an interpreter for Ava (Sandra Mae Frank), a deaf witness to the execution of two drug dealers.
When the killers try to...
Noah Berlatsky.
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Review: The Silent Hour
Despite familiar twists, The Silent Hour thoughtfully explores disability. - chicagoreader.com