The world premiere of U.S. Dramatic Competition film WHIPLASH directed by Damien Chazelle and starring Miles Teller, and J.K. Simmons kicked off the 2014 Sundance Film Festival on Thursday night. Whiplash, based on Chazelle’s 2013 Sundance Film Festival award-winning short film, open to rave reviews with Variety declaring “Miles Teller drums his heart out — and then some — in writer-director Damien Chazelle’s stellar career-starter, “Whiplash,” which demolishes the cliches of the musical-prodigy genre.”
In WHIPLASH, Andrew, a promising 19-year-old drummer at a cutthroat Manhattan music conservatory, has little interest in being just a musician. Haunted by his father’s failed writing career and plagued with the fear that mediocrity just might be genetic, Andrew dreams of greatness. Determined not to follow in his father’s footsteps, he practices daily until his hands literally bleed. The pressure of success ratchets into high gear when he is picked to join the school band led by the infamous Terence Fletcher, a brutally savage music instructor who will stop at nothing to realize a student’s potential. Under Fletcher’s ruthless direction, Andrew begins to pursue perfection at any cost—even his humanity.
