Chris Knipp
02-21-2025, 01:19 PM
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20qtns.jpg
FREDERIK LOUIS HVID: THE QUIET ONES/DE LYDLOSE (2024)
The largest heist in Danish history
Denmark's largest cash heist came at the time of the 2008 internatonal monetary crisis, but did not serve to offset it--for anybody. The over a dozen men involved in the big operation were caught a year later and given stiff prison sentences. All that's left is this movie. And it's a tough, sleek machihe that seeks to follow historical events closely, sometimes at the expense of clarity or fun. The style of The Quiet Ones is dark, fast, cryptic, and brutal. There is no question about the sleek beauty of its harsh unfolding. But I lacked a sense of structure and play or of contgrolled suspense that one finds in the best such movies.
The stars are a North African Arab and a scarred, sculpted boxer called Kasper (Gustav Giese) with a young dughter, a North African Arab, Slimani (Reda Kateb), and a stiff, blonde, highly motivated security guard called Maria (Amanda Collin). But this is one of the issues, beause these three people, even the two who are partners in crime, have little communication with each other. Maria is someone they want to avoid, of course, but the outsider, Slimani, and the local, Kasper, don't have much to say to each other either. Kasper was chosen by outsiders to be the mastermind, and Slimani is the firm, brutal leader. When the final instructions are given, the gang of men are told that they are not to excange an F-ing word with each other during the operation from start to finish. Really? There goes the dialogue.
Of course one of the models of the art of heist movies is Jules Dassin's 1955 Rififi whose robbery takes place over an immensely rich twnnty minutes when not a word is spoken. But we don't need words then, because all our attention is on the meticulous, breathtaking execution of the careflly made plan, which we have seen fully discussed in the preceeding sequences of the planning.
For all the intricacy and scale of the Copenhagen Job, it is never outlined on screen to my satisfaction. Due to techical difficulties the masterminds of the robbery hit on an unusual measure: shutting down the whole city of Copenhagen. They commandeer garbage trucks and park them across major thoroughfares to block traffic all over the city to gain a period of minutes they needed to carry away many bags loaded with currencies. (An account of the real event this film is based on can be found in "The Copenhagen Job" by Line Holm Nielsen in In Order of Disappearance (https://magazine.atavist.com/copenhagen-job/]Atavist Magazine[/URL].)
But the movie doesn't show us diagrams or give us a sense of the op being carried out in coordination throught the city. I can't help thinking of another favorite heist movie, Michael Mann's 1970 debut feature starring James Caan. There's nothihg subtle about Caan's character, but he's a character, and his two heists in the movie are exact, muscular, and suspenseful, whereas the big one here seems always a bit out of our reach.
Did I say The Quiet Ones was humorless? Well, Kasper may kid his little girl - in a rather stilted, timid way - but if anybody cracks a smile otherwise I missed it. And there's the lack of a common language, because folks shift back and forth between Danish and English and several other languages, including a dialect of Arabic, with no sense of nuance traded back and forth between them.
In this context I'm reminded of a favorite relatively recent crime picture that happens also to be Scandanavian, the Norwegian Hans Petter Moland's 2016[URL="https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3433) (also, like this, a Magnet release). This may be an unfair comarison because there's nothing realistic about this memorably violent gangster movie, but it's droll and hilarious from start to finish, even as the entire cast is being bumped off one by one. (That reminds of of Robert Hamer's 1949 Kind Hearts and Coronets, English cinematic drollery at its absoluter peak, and featuring the great Alec Guinnesass at the height of his genius as the victimes of a series of deft assassinations of family members.). Well, The Quiet Ones is direly in need of a bit of fun, a bit of color, or even a little more particularity in the deliniation of character, but those qualities are really not there, I fear.
How do they get in to the cash cache? This isn't made terribly clear. Something about breaking down a wall. And it's messy, of course (as it should be). It's supposed to go down with one smash of a bulldozer, but then it doesn't. Fine; but one could have used more details, since this is a crucial moment of the heist.
There is energy to this film, and a dark, glittering hardness. We do have to believe that they get away with a huge haul of money, all lovely and unmarked. (Nowadays, it's a little hard to believe that, but anyway this system doesn't seem like a very good idea although, when you come to think about it, what would be a subtle way to break into the Danish headquarters of Loomis and grab a big chunk of their store of currency? There is none. The filmmakers chose this story because it was big, not because it was cool. Ultimately this film likely will interest Danes (and other Scandanavians) much more than people from other countries where this kihd of thing may not be all that unusual.
There is one ray of hope. Prior to his capture, we see Kaspar burying a bag of the money on the island of Mallorca and we hear that only a fraction of the heist was recovered.
The Quiet Ones/De Lydløse, 110 mins., debuted at Toronto Sept. 5, 2024, opened in Denmark Oct. 31. Also shown at Palm Springs and Gothenberg. US release Feb. 21, 2025 on Magnolia's Magnet label.
FREDERIK LOUIS HVID: THE QUIET ONES/DE LYDLOSE (2024)
The largest heist in Danish history
Denmark's largest cash heist came at the time of the 2008 internatonal monetary crisis, but did not serve to offset it--for anybody. The over a dozen men involved in the big operation were caught a year later and given stiff prison sentences. All that's left is this movie. And it's a tough, sleek machihe that seeks to follow historical events closely, sometimes at the expense of clarity or fun. The style of The Quiet Ones is dark, fast, cryptic, and brutal. There is no question about the sleek beauty of its harsh unfolding. But I lacked a sense of structure and play or of contgrolled suspense that one finds in the best such movies.
The stars are a North African Arab and a scarred, sculpted boxer called Kasper (Gustav Giese) with a young dughter, a North African Arab, Slimani (Reda Kateb), and a stiff, blonde, highly motivated security guard called Maria (Amanda Collin). But this is one of the issues, beause these three people, even the two who are partners in crime, have little communication with each other. Maria is someone they want to avoid, of course, but the outsider, Slimani, and the local, Kasper, don't have much to say to each other either. Kasper was chosen by outsiders to be the mastermind, and Slimani is the firm, brutal leader. When the final instructions are given, the gang of men are told that they are not to excange an F-ing word with each other during the operation from start to finish. Really? There goes the dialogue.
Of course one of the models of the art of heist movies is Jules Dassin's 1955 Rififi whose robbery takes place over an immensely rich twnnty minutes when not a word is spoken. But we don't need words then, because all our attention is on the meticulous, breathtaking execution of the careflly made plan, which we have seen fully discussed in the preceeding sequences of the planning.
For all the intricacy and scale of the Copenhagen Job, it is never outlined on screen to my satisfaction. Due to techical difficulties the masterminds of the robbery hit on an unusual measure: shutting down the whole city of Copenhagen. They commandeer garbage trucks and park them across major thoroughfares to block traffic all over the city to gain a period of minutes they needed to carry away many bags loaded with currencies. (An account of the real event this film is based on can be found in "The Copenhagen Job" by Line Holm Nielsen in In Order of Disappearance (https://magazine.atavist.com/copenhagen-job/]Atavist Magazine[/URL].)
But the movie doesn't show us diagrams or give us a sense of the op being carried out in coordination throught the city. I can't help thinking of another favorite heist movie, Michael Mann's 1970 debut feature starring James Caan. There's nothihg subtle about Caan's character, but he's a character, and his two heists in the movie are exact, muscular, and suspenseful, whereas the big one here seems always a bit out of our reach.
Did I say The Quiet Ones was humorless? Well, Kasper may kid his little girl - in a rather stilted, timid way - but if anybody cracks a smile otherwise I missed it. And there's the lack of a common language, because folks shift back and forth between Danish and English and several other languages, including a dialect of Arabic, with no sense of nuance traded back and forth between them.
In this context I'm reminded of a favorite relatively recent crime picture that happens also to be Scandanavian, the Norwegian Hans Petter Moland's 2016[URL="https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3433) (also, like this, a Magnet release). This may be an unfair comarison because there's nothing realistic about this memorably violent gangster movie, but it's droll and hilarious from start to finish, even as the entire cast is being bumped off one by one. (That reminds of of Robert Hamer's 1949 Kind Hearts and Coronets, English cinematic drollery at its absoluter peak, and featuring the great Alec Guinnesass at the height of his genius as the victimes of a series of deft assassinations of family members.). Well, The Quiet Ones is direly in need of a bit of fun, a bit of color, or even a little more particularity in the deliniation of character, but those qualities are really not there, I fear.
How do they get in to the cash cache? This isn't made terribly clear. Something about breaking down a wall. And it's messy, of course (as it should be). It's supposed to go down with one smash of a bulldozer, but then it doesn't. Fine; but one could have used more details, since this is a crucial moment of the heist.
There is energy to this film, and a dark, glittering hardness. We do have to believe that they get away with a huge haul of money, all lovely and unmarked. (Nowadays, it's a little hard to believe that, but anyway this system doesn't seem like a very good idea although, when you come to think about it, what would be a subtle way to break into the Danish headquarters of Loomis and grab a big chunk of their store of currency? There is none. The filmmakers chose this story because it was big, not because it was cool. Ultimately this film likely will interest Danes (and other Scandanavians) much more than people from other countries where this kihd of thing may not be all that unusual.
There is one ray of hope. Prior to his capture, we see Kaspar burying a bag of the money on the island of Mallorca and we hear that only a fraction of the heist was recovered.
The Quiet Ones/De Lydløse, 110 mins., debuted at Toronto Sept. 5, 2024, opened in Denmark Oct. 31. Also shown at Palm Springs and Gothenberg. US release Feb. 21, 2025 on Magnolia's Magnet label.