The editor’s note: This review was originally published during Toronto International 2024 Film Festival. Magnet drops ”The silent“In the theater on February 21, 2025.
There is Funny Heist movies And there are Serious heist filmsAnd Frederik Louis Hviid’s skeleton but gripping “the silent” – based on the largest Danish robbery ever committed – identifies immediately and unequivocally as the latter. It starts in Sweden in 2006, where we go together with two security guards in an armored car when they make an early morning cash delivery. She is a combat -tested veteran who has seen everything, he is a beginner with a new child at home, and both will be shot to death within minutes when the latter tries to escape from the gang with militarized thieves that bake their vehicle.
These criminals are not fucking around, and when they show up Copenhagen Two years later with an eye against recruiting a local boxer to a massive point, we cannot help but wonder if Kasper (Gustav Giese, chiseled and defaced as a public statue, and just a little more expressive) comes over over your head. He is a bruise to be safe, but also a loving family man who just wants to make his wife and their young daughter proud. He cannot bear the idea of being a failure, and although there is no reason to believe that he may not succeed with the ring, he does not have the patience to settle in the trail. “When will I become a champion?” He asks his coach. “Start by winning your first fight,” the coach replies.
The deep scars in Kasper’s face indicate that he has already suffered any losses of one or another in his life, and he radiates a decency that makes it too easy for us to hope he comes out on top, regardless of the shortcut he takes for to get there. So when his shady jeweler of a brother -in -law connects him to the Mastermind of the Sweden Job (a fat and glowing clear Ketab as Slmani, who stocks the dead eyes of a career criminal with an extra pinch of sadism just for keep us on the toes), our feelings Are of course contradictory. We are invested in Kasper but not so much for his scary killer by a new boss, and that deviation just becomes more extreme after the unnecessary scene where Slimani abuses his girlfriend – a speaking mistake in a movie struggling to balance its constant potential Violence with its thieves well oiled professionalism.
The not so complicated matrix for our sympathies is made a hair more complex of the glazing introduction of a blond security guard called Maria (Amanda Collin), such as Anders Frithiof Augustus-Fast decisions to be as recklessly effective as possible-details with all love for a clerical error. All we know about Mary is that she cares about her job, she plays according to the rules and she will inevitably cross roads with Sliemani’s gang on the fateful night when they frame a bulldozer in the depot where she works.
Of course, “the silent” – its title that refers to the construction of its protagonist, as well as the unmarked bills he tries to steal – is more interested in process than character details. By mimicking a Jules Dassin-Heist thriller, while it largely avoids the coolness that tends to accompany it, increases which in the stylish details of the robbery until any feeling of moral assessment has seeped out of the equation. It is unclear whether Kasper gets more desperately of the threatening threat of the global financial crisis (although it floats over the film with the revelation of an imminent hurricane), but this is not a crime history about a good man who is forced to make bad choices so Much as it is a smooth tragedy about the need for belonging.
Everyone just wants to feel that they have found their place in the world, and although there is nothing particularly remarkable about Slmanis Masterplan (they will block the roads with junk cars, pack the money in stolen Audis and nail the roads behind them as they peel away from the stage ), “the silent” breaks a tangible sense of personal speed from the feeling of purpose that their slimmanis recruits give their various roles. Like cogs that slit into a raw machine, these men are simply – and eagerly – fulfills their purpose, which is enough with their own reward that the money is almost starting to act as a means for an end. It may not be square with Kasper’s obsession with breaking the record for Denmark’s biggest heist, but I suppose it is difficult to shake free from a master’s mentality, least of all in a world that is conditioned people to win at all costs.
Shots in different darkness shades and leveled to pure adrenaline with the help of Martin Dirkov’s glassy point, “The Silent” is clearly absent the criminal romance that often strives for other films such as it. The heist itself creates an engaging set (how could it not?), But which consistently emphasizes the cold anxiety to pull it off – an anxiety that he refuses to soften with forced friendship or exaggerate with unforeseen turns. There is a blunt reality to the task, and it always gives our attention to the sad fact that Kasper and CO. trying to steal a feeling of performance that they will never be able to keep.
In a movie that is less afraid to gain access to the humanity of its characters, it may have been enough to make the wild signed Mary-so dedicated to the slow grinding of her work-known as a more thoroughly effective foil to the robbers trying jumps over the road to success. But despite its Teflon gloss, “the silent” is even enough to recognize a remaining despair in the fact that Maria risks her life for a paycheck and a pat on the back. Sure, it’s another way of saying that she is doing her job, but it may not seem like reward enough when the economy starts to collapse around her. When this hard nose genre exercises arrive at their ambivalent final scene, whether the criminals avoid stealing a few million kroner feels anything but irrelevant to a world where real fulfillment is so difficult to hold.
Rating: C+
“The Quiet Ones” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival 2024. Magnet releases the movie Friday, February 2025.
Want to keep you updated on IndieWire’s movie Reviews And critical thoughts? Subscribe here To our recently launched newsletter, in review by David Ehrlich, where our main film critic and Head Review’s editor rounds off the best reviews, streaming elections and offers some new Musings, all only available for subscribers.
