Amanda Collin, Amin Ahmed, Camilla Lau, Christopher Wagelin, Denmark, drama, Granit Rushiti, Gustav Giese, Ida Cæcilie Rasmussen, Jens Hulten, movies, Reda Kateb, reviews, The Quiet Ones, TIFF, Toronto International Film Festival, true crime
April 11, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Frederik Louis Hviid
Danish and Swedish with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in Denmark, Sweden and briefly in Spain, in 2007 and 2008, the dramatic film “The Quiet Ones” (based on a true story) features a predominantly white group of people (with some Middle Easterns and Africans) representing the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.
Culture Clash: A group of thieves commit the largest robbery in the history of Denmark, when they steal about 60 million Danish kroner in cash from a warehouse for a cash transportation company.
Culture Audience: “The Quiet Ones” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in drama based on true crimes, but this is a drab and hollow recreation of a notorious and fascinating case.
“The Quiet Ones” is a disappointing drama (based on a true story) about robbers who committed the biggest cash heist in Denmark history. The movie begins with a gripping, action-packed sequence, but then fizzles out with mediocre acting and a listless plot. The movie’s direction and screenplay are clunky, making most of the main characters shallow and uninteresting.
Directed by Frederik Louis Hviid and written by Anders Frithiof August, “The Quiet Ones” had its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. The movie takes place mostly in 2007 and 2008 in Denmark and in Sweden. Many people watching “The Quiet Ones” will already know it’s based on a true story, so there’s no real suspense that this major heist is going to happen.
Unfortunately, the movie gets bogged down in a lot of dull scenes about the robbers having personal conflicts with each other and with other people in their lives. The planning of this crime is shown in very superfical ways. And when it finally does happen, the movie is almost over.
“The Quiet Ones” begins by showing a botched and deadly robbery that happened in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2007. Three armed and masked men hold up a security van occupied by two co-workers (a man and a woman) who have some valuables in the van. The van’s windows are bulletproof, but the armed robbers force the co-workers out of the car.
The van has a suitcase and a safe. The robbers want what’s in the safe. The female co-worker explains why she can’t open the safe: “The new system requires new keys.” She says that she and her co-worker do not have the keys. The male co-worker is able to escape by running away, but the female co-worker isn’t so lucky. She’s shot in the face and dies.
The movie then does a time jump to 2008, in Ballerup, Denmark, where aspiring mixed-martial artist fighter Kasper (played by Gustav Giese) lives with his wife Aaliyah (played by Camilla Lau) and their 7-year-old daughter. The movie is told from Kasper’s perspective. Aaliyah tells Kasper that her brother wants Kasper to stop by the brother’s shop because a Moroccan wants to talk to Kasper.
Kasper doesn’t actually meet the mysterious Moroccan in the shop but in a dark alley. The stranger’s name is Slimani (played by Reda Kateb), who says these ominous words to Kasper: “I heard about you guys. You fucked up in Sweden last year.” This is how the movie reveals that Kasper was in that trio of robbers who killed the security van employee.
The rest of “The Quiet Ones” shows how Kasper forms an uneasy alliance with Slimani, who’s the ruthless mastermind behind the 60 million-Danish kroner (kr) heist that’s depicted in the movie On August 10, 2008, when the robbery occurred, 60 million kr would have been equal to about $12 million in U.S. dollars. The thieves plan to steal the cash from a warehouse used by Dansk Value Handling, a cash transportation company. The warehouse is in Glostrup, Demark, a suburb of the Denmak capital Copenhagen.
The only thing that’s revealed about Slimani and his personal life is that he’s abusive to his loyal girlfriend Pumpkin (played by Ida Cæcilie Rasmussen), who lives in Sengeløse, Denmark. As an example of how cruel Slimani is, there’s a scene where Pumpkin asks him not to bring any guns into the house. His response is to strangle her and dunk her head in a water-filled kitchen sink. He doesn’t kill her, but his attack is brutal enough for Pumpkin to live in fear of Slimani.
In addition to Kasper and Slimani, the other men in this group of conniving thieves are Hasse (played by Christopher Wagelin), Warsame (played by Amin Ahmed), Joppe (played by Jens Hultén) and Mo (played by Granit Rushiti), who don’t have personalities that stand out. There are six thieves who are shown doing the heist, but in real life, there were actually a lot more thieves (15 of them were caught and convicted) who were responsible for this crime. The movie has an epilogue about what happened to the stolen loot and the thieves.
Why does family man Kasper want to get involved in such a high-risk robbery? The only explanation that the movie gives is he doesn’t want to work in a regular job and he wants more money to fuel his mixed-martial training and enough money so that he doesn’t have to work for the rest of his life. Amanda Collin has a supporting role as a security guard named Maria, who is on duty at the Dansk Value Handling warehouse when the thieves arrive.
The buildup to this heist is very underwhelming. The dialogue in the movie is very generic and doesn’t give much insight into who these men really are. “The Quiet Ones” also has too much drab cinematography that makes almost everything looked washed-out and bland. By the end of the movie, you won’t care about what happens to this deplorable bunch of criminals because the film ends in such a wishy-washy manner, with no real closure before the rushed epilogue.
Magnet Releasing released “The Quiet Ones” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on February 21, 2025. The movie was released in Denmark and Sweden in 2024.