Film festivals can often feel like sitting down to eat your vegetables. While that kind of nutrition can be enjoyable and good for soul, sometimes you want to push the salad aside for the pleasures of a thick, medium-rare steak. Frederik Louis Hviid’s chiseled, no frills heist flick The Quiet Ones is exactly that kind of satisfying treat. Working with a familiar blend of genre ingredients, balanced and plated to near perfection, this nervy thriller is sure to please action fans seeking a blast of adrenaline.
Kasper (Gustav Giese) is a doting father, family man, and aspiring boxer who’s eager to make his mark in the world. Sticking to a chicken and rice diet, and a vigorous workout regimen at the local gym, the shredded pugilist dreams of taking one more shot at the title. But Kasper’s plans are interrupted when the shady and slimy Slimani (Reda Kateb) shows up at his door looking for help with a different kind of knockout — robbing the vault at the Loomis armored transport company. Sensing an opportunity to take home the trophy in an entirely different arena, Kasper’s guard quickly comes down and soon he has a commanding role in what becomes the biggest score in Denmark’s history.
Based on a true story, from the first minute Hviid takes a muscular approach to the material. The director’s first major flex kicks off the film with a bracing sequence as a botched heist unfolds in bravura oner. Showing a sure hand at pacing, the picture then slows down and takes viewers across Denmark and Sweden, as Kasper and Slimani methodically put the pieces of their plan together. The slyly devilish screenplay by Anders Frithiof August lulls the audience into a false sense of complacency and even complicity. There is something undeniably alluring about Kasper’s stoic, risk-it-all dedication to caring for his family — until you realize his endeavor is entirely self-centered. If he can’t be champion in the ring, then he’ll be one outside of it, no matter what it takes.
Behind the camera, Hviid assembles his own formidable team that infuses The Quiet Ones with the blockbuster spectacle it aspires to be. Composer Martin Dirkov (Border, The Holy Spider, Independence Day: Resurgence — with a score that falls between Ludwig Göransson’s sensational bombast and Cliff Martinez’s pulsating moodiness), editor Anders Albjerg Kristiansen (A Royal Affair, Riders of Justice), and cinematographer Adam Wallensten work in lockstep to bring a polished, brawny personality to the proceedings. Their efforts culminate in the film’s centrepiece heist sequence, which unfolds over thirty, increasingly nerve-rattling, pulse-pounding minutes that shows serious shades of Michael Mann and William Friedken. There’s also a strong dose of James Gray with a car chase through torrential rain that might be the best of its kind since We Own The Night.
Set against the backdrop of the 2007-2008 global economic crisis, Hviid and August aren’t particularly interested in the ways in which capitalism might push someone to desperate measures to ensure financial security for themselves and their loved ones. But perhaps, unconsciously, the film offers the view that the Kasper and his assembled gang aren’t much different than the financial institutions that played fast and loose with investments until it all came crashing down around them. Taking money from a vault or watching it collapse thanks to risky, unregulated rules on the stock market — which is the greater crime?
At its heart, The Quiet Ones is an exciting genre effort that thoughtfully explores the hollow pursuit of success. Kasper’s exacting details to pull off the perfect crime curdles into a mania about ensuring the heist is the greatest that’s ever been pulled off. But as the stakes grow higher, it becomes apparent that for Kasper, the job was never really about anything more than doing something big because the opportunity presented itself. And he’ll discover that after counting up the haul and riding off into the sunset, there’s no price tag big enough that’s worth the loneliness that follows from being at the top.
Director: Frederik Louis Hviid
Screenplay: Anders Frithiof August
Cast: Gustav Giese, Reda Kateb, Amanda Collin, Christopher Wagelin, Jens Hultén, Granit Rushiti, Amin Ahmed
Producers: Kasper Dissing
Cinematography: Adam Wallensten
Production design: Sabine Hviid, Benjamin Salomon
Costume design: Emilie Boge Dresler
Editing: Anders Albjerg Kristiansen
Music: Martin Dirkov
Sound: Morten Green
Production companies: Zentropa Entertainments (Denmark), Zentropa Sweden (Sweden), Kazak Productions (France), Zentropa International France (France)
World sales: TrustNordisk
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Discovery)
In Danish, English, Swedish, Arabic
110 minutes
