This crime thriller takes place largely in a nearly empty apartment building, ostensibly in Boston, Massachusetts, although the end credits reveal that the film was actually shot on location in Malta. But that’s fine, because the whole exercise feels strange that it’s not tied to any specific location, other than the rooms the main characters rush through, trying to avoid being killed by gunmen – who turn out to be police officers, as does the male lead, Frank Shaw. (Joel Kinnaman). The atmosphere gets another dose of unfamiliarity thanks to the fact that Frank and his fellow victim Ava (Sandra Mae Frank) are both deaf, a trait that makes them vulnerable but also gives them the advantage of being able to communicate silently through American media. Sign language as they evade their pursuers.
Frank lost his hearing almost a year ago after suffering a head injury during an arrest attempt. Now spending much of his time drowning his sorrows, he is lured back by his former partner, Slater (Mark Strong), to help interpret a witness statement from Ava, who has been deaf since birth and preferably communicates via ASL. It makes you wonder why Slater didn’t just ask Ava to write a statement, since the young woman can clearly read and write. But his insistence on letting Frank help leads to an unfortunate series of events: Frank leaves his cell phone in Ava’s apartment and then sees the killers she previously identified return to kill her.
Director Brad Anderson – who has had mixed success in his career since his groundbreaking feature film The Machinist, starring the skinny Christian Bale – expertly operates the levers and pulleys of this mechanical cat-and-mouse game as Ava and Frank hide from the bad guys . Unsurprisingly, the film recreates the characters’ auditory abilities with partially and then completely muted sound – but the visuals are interesting too, the sets full of gloomy corners and ominous pools of darkness.
All the performances are solid, not just from the leads but also the antagonists, led by Mekhi Phifer as the main heavyweight: a not entirely morally bankrupt character who clearly feels his actions are justified. Still, the moral math seems calculated in advance to guarantee an outcome in numbers, but it’s a fascinating puzzle while it lasts.