Today I will be doing a spoiler-free review of Whiplash. This movie came out in 2014, and the main idea is this young jazz drummer, Andrew, wants to be at the top of his class. Terrance Fletcher is an instructor known for his terrifying teaching methods and is pushing Andrew in a way that will forever change him. I just watched this the other day, and it truly is already in my top 15 movies I’ve ever watched. The most obvious part of this being as good as it was, is the acting displayed by Miles Teller (Andrew) and J.K. Simmons (Terrance). J.K. Simmons deservingly won many awards for this movie including a Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, Critics’ Choice, and many more. He was so perfect in portraying this man that wants to create the “next big thing” in jazz, that he is willing to put Andrew through absolutely everything to get him there. Miles Teller as Andrew can’t be understated either. His portraying the scared and nervous kid, getting really overconfident, then coming right back down to earth immediately was perfect. One of the best duo acting performances I’ve seen in a movie ever.
Here is where I would usually talk about the antagonist of the movie. If there was one, it would be Terrance, however, I don’t really think that label fits him perfectly here. Besides these two, there wasn’t too much else to offer from the rest of the cast, but it wasn’t needed at all. Paul Reiser plays Andrew’s father, and he does pretty well in this, with the limited screen time. I also loved the directing style of this by Damien Chazelle. Damien has a unique type of directing, and this is also similar to La La Land, which he also directed. The pacing was absolutely perfect, and some of the best pacing I’ve ever seen in a movie. The movie was only 1 hour and 47 minutes long, but you didn’t even feel that runtime. The score was fantastic too, which is another thing Chazelle does fantastic as with being a director. Even just the scenes of Andrew playing the drums for 2+ minutes was entertaining in itself. The ending was one of my favorite parts of this movie as well, as it has one of the best endings I’ve ever seen. This whole last 10-15 minutes is just so captivating, watching everything Andrew has fought for almost go up in flames.
I always rate the movies I watch and I rate them based on 10 things in the movie. Those things are: acting, cinematography, pacing, score, characters, ending, plot, protagonist, directing, and emotion. I rate all of those pieces 1-10 and then after that, I add up the scores of all 10 of them and get a total score out of 100. I gave this movie a 97/100, and as I’ve said this entire review, there are absolutely no flaws with this movie at all. For a movie with only a $3.3 million budget, it also looked fantastic and they just absolutely nailed everything. With this movie coming out in 2014, I’m very comfortable calling this a modern-day masterpiece.
