Heist films may be a dime a dozen, but The Quiet Ones is a crisp $100 bill. Frederik Louis Hviid’s caper is a well-oiled machine, as precise and poised as its thieving protagonists, whose mission—inspired by the true story of Denmark’s all-time largest robbery—is to empty a cash handling firm of its enormous reserves. Indebted to everything from The Asphalt Jungle to Heat and yet bolstered by a distinctive style rooted in charged silence, this standout thriller invigorates its well-worn formula through meticulous stewardship and an excellent performance from headliner Gustav Dyekjær Giese as a boxer who attempts to realize his dreams of glory in the most daringly illicit manner imaginable.

Premiering on Sept. 6 at the Toronto International Film Festival, The Quiet Ones opens with a tranquil, blue-tinted panorama of Gothenburg, Sweden, at dawn in 2007. With unhurried grace that’s counterbalanced by Martin Dirkov’s ominous, ticking-clock score, Hviid (channeling Christopher Nolan-via-Michael Mann) gradually pans around to gaze down at an armored truck, at which point his camera relocates to inside that fortress on wheels, where the driver and her newbie colleague are chatting about this and that while doing their morning duties. Before they can leave, they’re surrounded by multiple vehicles out of which emerge armed assailants. Things go hellish fast, culminating in tragedy and failure for everyone involved, all of which is dramatized in the first of three dazzlingly extended and dexterous single takes from the backseat of a car.

A year later in........

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