On Pins and Needles During the Silent Hour

So, a couple years ago Sandra Mae Frank came on our radar when she played Dr. Wilder on the series, New Amsterdam, because she played a deaf surgeon.  I went through her filmography, and found out she got started as a receptionist in another show, Switched At Birth, we watched.  I mentioned her in this entry about true crips repping in Hollywood.  When I saw her pushing a new movie on IG, I did some research, and watched it one night, then, showed it to Joey, who dug it. 

Here's the unedited review I did for Cryptic Rock...

Imagine being deaf and being the only witness to a double murder.  Okay, now, what if those perps “happened” to get wind of the single deaf witness to the murder they committed?  And, what happens to an investigator when he goes deaf after an accident trying to catch a suspect, how does he cope with his new disability?  Can he effectively still be a good investigator?

These are the questions that come up in Brad Anderson’s (Session 9 (’01), Stonehearst Asylum (’14) The Silent Hour.  It was released by Valletta Pictures, AGC Studios, Meridian Pictures, and Orogen Entertainment, which financed the movie, and dropped October 11^th.

Dan Hall in his feature debut as a writer was inspired to write the movie after reading an article about NYPD officer Dan Carione, who uses a hearing aid after an on-the-job accident.

Joel Kinnaman (Suicide Squad (’16, ’21) stars as Detective Frank Shaw, Sandra Mae Frank (Soul to Keep (’18), New Amsterdam series (’21-’23) as Ava Fremont, Mekhi Phifer (8 Mile (’02), ER series (’02-’08) as Mason Lynch, Mark Strong, who was in this year’s The Penguin and Dune: Prophecy series on Max, as Detective Doug Slater, Michael Eklund (Antlers (’21), Trap House (’23) as Angel, Djinda Kane (Uncorked (’20) as the Medic, Katrina Lupi, in her feature debut, as Sam Shaw, Jonathan Koensgen (Reacher series (’22), FUBAR series (’23)  as Sal, Matthew Camilleri in his feature debut as Farrell, Anthony Grant, who was in this year’s All the Lost Ones as Julius, Chris Dingli, who was in this year’s Serena as Chris, Marko Nikolic in only his second featured as Jimmy, and Sean James Sutton, who was in this year’s Utopia.

The Silent Hour could easily be your run of the mill, cliched feel good flick with a newly disabled person meeting an established disabled person under strange circumstances.  This isn’t that flick.  Silent Hour’s genuinely exciting, scary, and pulls at the heartstrings with the relationship Frank and Ava are thrust in from the start when Frank and his co-worker show at Ava’s apartment without an interpreter for her to give her statement, only to find out that Frank, who hasn’t been taking his ASL lessons seriously still in denial of being really deaf, is going to stand in as “interpreter”.  He’s not bad, but he’s not good either, and Ava patiently corrects him throughout the movie.  Here, we get to really see Sandra Mae Frank, who’s truly deaf, shine.  Here she is with her life not only getting threatened with eviction, but now with thugs gunning for her because she happened to pick that night to shoot some photography and caught a murder instead, and she’s helping the newbie with his ASL who’s supposed to be tasked with keeping her above ground.  We even get to learn how to drop the F-bomb in ASL!

Acting wise, nothing is played for laughs.  Everybody plays it straight with the exception of one sequence where Frank teaches Ava how to hold a gun at the window while he creates a distraction at the apartment they’re hold up in.  To see her face when she empties the clip at Mason and almost hit him is priceless.

Confined to Ava's apartment building and some sequences totally silent, there's feelings of claustrophobia that come in waves.  We really felt for Ava.  She's not perfect, she admits she's a former addict, but that's not what she was doing out.

Made on an undisclosed budget, Silent Hour made $322,064 worldwide.  On Rotten Tomatoes, it carries 67% with critics while there isn’t an audience score tallied yet, but people who’ve seen the movie have defended it and especially Frank saying in a November 30^th review, “Some of the reviews which were made by professionals have treated this as the film they wish had been made. The female actor Sandra Mae Frank IS deaf and the film is a useful demonstration of how such actors can be integrated into a film. It's a thriller, made more so by the main characters' deafness. The main actions are hide and seek in an empty building, where the goodies use a variety of "tricks" to evade the "baddies". The tensions are well-maintained and Mark Strong plays against type. Try also to imagine how the director would have interacted with Ms. Frank, in making the film.”