I swear, there must be an “example” screenplay in every film school’s Screenwriting 201 textbook, one with “dirty cops” who must be overcome, outsmarted and above all else SUSPECTED in a thriller that hopes to deliver a second or third act surprise.

The set-up for such scripts can have all the novel elements, milieus and settings you want. But anybody paying one second’s attention has only to wonder “They won’t be THAT obvious, will they?”

“The Silent Hour” is a compact, paranoid thriller about a detective (Joel Kinnaman) who goes deaf trying to protect a deaf witness (Sandra May Frank) from those out to murder her.

The setting is a about-to-be-renovated Boston apartment building, with the heroes forced to fight their way, floor-by-floor, bad guy by bad guy, out. So it’s the Thai thriller “The Raid” or its sequels without the body count, the gonzo martial artis mixed with the gunplay and on occasion, without sound.

The director is Brad Anderson, a practiced auteur (“The Machinist,” “”Transsiberian,” “Fractured,” “Beirut.” So even if the screenwriter is cribbing his “practice script” from Screenwriting 201 “dirty cops” thriller, there’s a lot going for this one, including the stars — “Game of Thrones” vet Kinnaman, veteran character actor Mark Strong, hearing-impaired “Sound of Fear” actress Sandra May Frank and Mekhi Phfifer.

Kinnaman plays a delusional “super cop” who loses his hearing in a bust-gone-wrong in the film’s pro forma opening (the 401st filmed chase through shipping containers on the Boston docks) opening scene.

Frank can’t hear much, and his hearing loss is “progressive.” His daughter’s birthday present guitar and guitar recitals? Better hear them while he can. Hearing aids monitored by cell phone? Only good as long as he keeps them charged. But even that won’t be enough. Eventually.

Months later, his former partner (Strong) talks him into “interpreting” when a deaf witness (Frank) to a mob execution turns up and no other interpreter is available. That’s how sloppy-ASL speaker Frank gets mixed up with Ava, who finds herself hunted by a hit squad that knows she knows. That’s where Ava gives Frank the pluck to continue the work and stick with a job he was and is good at.

“One missing piece doesn’t make you any less whole,” she tells him (via Americal Sign Language).

The picture’s task is to trap them in that nearly empty building with or without a phone, with or without a firearm, as bad guys — some wearing badges — try to track them down and silence them.

The threat is palpable and laid-out in blunt strokes. The “solutions” to problems are likewise set up to be checked-off, one at a time. But the obvious foreshadowing doesn’t negate the film’s suspense or the occasional clever bit of “get out of this jam” problem-solving.

We can be a step or two ahead of our couple in peril and still revel in the execution of the their various means of escape. Providing they do escape.

Anderson lets us experience their plight as they do, in shocking blasts of silence when what they really need is that one sense that will tell them the head honcho of the villains (Mekhi Phifer, excellent) is closing in, chambering a round or calling for more minions to help him stop them.

The script by Dan Hall is strictly paint-by-numbers — cut and dried and predictable. But the execution atones for some of that, and the performances give it that extra something that makes even a formulaic thriller worth your time.

Rating: R, violence, profanity, substance abuse

Cast: Joel Kinnaman, Sandra May Frank, Mark Strong and Mekhi Phifer.

Credits: Directed by Brad Anderson, scripted by Dan Hall. A Republic Pictures/Paramount release.

Running time: 1:39