J K Simmons usually gives great support but in WHIPLASH he steps up to the podium with top billing as the flailing formidable force that is Fletcher, a music teacher who unflinchingly raises the tempo of tutelage by instilling terror into his students. This is a percussive performance, peppered with salty expletives and explosive pauses.

Miles Teller is Andrew a budding drummer whose dreams of being a skins supremo are raised when Fletcher takes an interest in him. Fletcher is a manic manipulator, more tormentor than mentor, masking his megalomania under his mission against mediocrity. But Andrew is complicit and compliant, believing Fletcher’s belligerence is in fact benevolent, or at least beneficial to the ascension of his aspirations.

Poised for posterity, Andrew plucks the guts to approach Nicole, the counter attendant at the local picture palace he attends with his father. The romantic overture is beautifully realised but is an interlude short lived as the crashing crescendo of the drama dashes any impetus in the relationship.

Melissa Benoist is terrific as Nicole, her performance in the devastating break up scene a sublime study in bewildered desolation.

Writer director Damien Chazelle has fashioned a fascinating character study that examines where the line of demarcation between disciplinarian and bully might lie. Damien dreamed of drumming prodigiousness but to that end he experienced, tension and terror, the antithesis of the joy and liberation music is supposed to elicit.

Music is a prime element of the picture – primal even, the protagonist being a drummer – but Chazelle chooses to shoot it less as a musical but as a war film or a horror movie. Simmons portrayal has all the hallmarks of a drill sergeant. Blistered bloody hands, broken sticks, fear, fatigue, physical and mental exertion are all depicted in this meditation on success and greatness at any cost.

Editor Tom Cross engineers a thrilling syncopation of acting and musical performance, a symphony of cut and splice. It may well be the best edited film of the year. And as you’d expect, there is some killer music too, with an original score by Justin Hurwitz.

WHIPLASH cracks away raising ire, pulses, and questions, like, Is it the duty of the teacher to push, prod, spray profanity, and banish defeat? Is fear the spur?

Controversial, confronting, commanding, WHIPLASH cuts it as lacerating entertainment. Don’t wimp out.