Yahoo Lifestyle ‘The Quiet Ones’ Review: A Compelling If Chilly Replay of Denmark’s Biggest Heist
The biggest robbery in Danish history gets the big-screen treatment in “The Quiet Ones,” a somber piece whose chronicle from a heist’s inception to its disastrous (for the perps) aftermath has stirred comparisons to Michael Mann’s “Heat” 30 years ago. This well-cast and -crafted thriller does echo that film in some respects, albeit without the arresting style and more vivid characters that lent it near-mythic resonance. By contrast, ”Enforcement” co-director Frederik Louis Hviid’s second feature is an absorbing true-crime tale that readily holds attention for two hours, while lacking the deeper emotional involvement to linger in the mind long afterward. After six months on the festival circuit, Magnet is releasing the film to U.S. theaters and On Demand platforms on February 21st.
An opening sequence punchier than most of what follows depicts an armored-car stickup in 2007 Gothenburg, Sweden, that ends in coldblooded murder and no monetary haul. The following year in suburban Copenhagen, we meet 30-something Kasper (Gustav Giese), who despite his amply-displayed ripped physique is running out of time to make it as a professional boxer. With a wife (Camille Lau) and child (Dagmar Madicken Greve Halse) to support, he’s reluctantly open to a mystery call out of the blue that leads to a meeting with “the Moroccan,” Slimani (Reda Kateb).
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That unpleasant character proposes Kasper join him and older, pragmatic Hasse (Christopher Wagelin) in robbing one of the city’s primary cash-handling operations, which services banks and other businesses. Our hero agrees — even though he realizes his newly-met colleagues are the same people “who [messed] up in Sweden last year.”
When an unaffiliated group commits a similar theft, drawing unwanted media and police attention, Hasse figures it’s no longer a good time for them to proceed as planned. But Kasper — now a bit desperate after losing an important match — comes up with what he thinks is a fool-proof alternative scheme. It involves using a larger crew to block major intersections and police stations as the core crooks busy themselves breaking into the target location.
While orchestrating this plot, they use as base an isolated home where Slimani’s ex-lover (Ida Caecilie Rasmussen) has been intimidated into complicity. Meanwhile, newly trained security guard Maria (Amanda Collin) seems destined for a fateful run-in with this small army of variably trigger-happy men, soon duly armed with Kalishnikovs.
The creepy Slimani tells Kasper he immediately recognized “you’re a killer like me.” But in fact, our boxer protagonist is the only reasonablhy sympathetic figure among a tenuously linked group of thugs who aren’t likable, and don’t like each other. Giese brings a strong presence, physical and otherwise, that centers the film. But even he isn’t given much to work with in terms of character explication by veteran screenwriter (“Applause,” “A Funny Man”) Anders Frithiof August’s script. We can only guess at Kasper’s presumed criminal past or current money woes, neither of which are actually discussed.
All the actors make assertive impressions that can nonetheless only go so far in delineating figures who remain basically ciphers. Nor does the movie build the kind of enigmatic mood in which such obliqueness might seem a stylistic choice. We fear the worst in Slimani’s exploitative relationship with his ex, but it just seems careless rather than intriguing when she simply disappears from the narrative.
Still, “The Quiet Ones” has its strong plot engine and an ominous sense of imminent doom to keep it steadily engrossing. Suspense ratchets up as more players become involved, many of them hot-headed and adversarial. Once the heist itself commences around the one-hour mark, things quickly start to go awry, though under the circumstances it’s remarkable they don’t turn out far worse. Where the film starts to gain some depth is in its last act, when the law inexorably catches up with nearly everyone involved. A written postscript notes that most landed in prison — yet only a tiny percentage of the estimated $10 million stolen has been recovered.
Hviid has more of a feel for furtive, vaguely unsavory atmospherics and escalating editorial suspense than for maximizing action within memorable set-pieces. There’s a chilly distance to the aesthetic approach here, particularly in Adam Wallenstein’s widescreen cinematography, that impressed while arguably keeping us too much at arms-length from a story that could use a little more electric excitement. Successfully straddling that somewhat icy tone and a more hyperbolic effect are the anxious, pulsing synth textures of Martin Dirkov’s original score, which duly recall enduring prior thriller soundtracks by Tangerine Dream and Giorgio Moroder.
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