Premise: The drummer for a metal band abruptly goes deaf and has to adjust to his new life.
As far as ways to get me interested go, casting Riz Ahmed and Olivia Cooke in the lead roles of anything is a good way to go. I've been a fan of Cooke's since Me & Earl & The Dying Girl, and even though I really liked her when I caught up on Bates Motel, it was Thoroughbreds that really solidified her as someone I'll watch be sarcastic and withdrawn in nearly anything. Ahmed I first saw in his underappreciated role in Nightcrawler, where didn't get steamrolled by Jake Gyllenhaal's gonzo energy, which is tougher than it looked. Since then, he's showed up in a bunch of things I've liked. Unsurprisingly, both actors were great in Sound of Metal. Especially Ahmed. Cooke has more of a supporting role and disappears for a long stretch of the movie. I don't fully buy her as a metal singer, but I'm willing to go with it. This is Ahmed's movie and he's tremendous in it. This is a cup stacking performance that keeps adding to his degree of difficulty. On top of playing a recovering addict, he spent months learning how to play the drums convincingly and learned American Sign Language. And he apparently worked out like crazy the whole time based on the look of him in this. Oh, I shouldn't forget that he's British playing an American. They might as well have given him a limp too so he could complete the "Thing Actors Do To Win Oscars" Bingo card. I don't think this well be an Oscar nominated performance, but it probably should be. Whenever I think I know what kind of performance Ahmed is giving, it changes. He's angry, stubborn, likable, friendly, lonely, impulsive, and driven.
The sound on this movie is wild. They use a lot of tricks to show the audience how the world sounds to Ahmed's character, and it messed with me. You know what feeling when the picture is a little fuzzy on a TV or computer screen, and even though you could easily look at anything else and realize your vision is fine, you start to worry that something is wrong with your eyes? (No? Just me) That's how this movie is with sound. Even though I was still hearing everything else in my apartment fine, there were a couple moments in the movie where I got nervous about my own hearing. Granted, it means I'm a little too neurotic for my own good, but I think I should credit some of that to the movie.
The movie did lose me a little in the third act. It's needed for the story, of course, to show that change is permanent and there's no magic "fix" for his deafness. It just feels like he's stepped into someone else's movie at that point. I want to know more about Olivia Cooke's story while there. It didn't feel like a satisfying end to Ahmed's arc. I very well could be complaining that the movie ends with the exact effect the filmmakers wanted. The end point just seems wrong though. Like they should've ended it a little earlier or a few minutes later.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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