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Canada · 1978
Rated R · 1h 42m
Director Daryl Duke
Starring Elliott Gould, Christopher Plummer, Susannah York, Céline Lomez
Genre Drama, Thriller
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Miles Cullen is a bored teller at a bank in a Toronto mall who accidentally learns that his place of business is about to be robbed. Instead of informing his bosses or contacting the police, Miles cleverly devises a way of keeping the cash.
If it weren't for the gimmicks (and the sadism is so gratuitous it could be nothing else), then the film could easily pass for a minor caper thriller of the '60s, all convoluted plot and calculated kookiness. But cyphers (both female leads) and question-marks (who'll get the money, who'll survive - who cares?) dominate the script as every labyrinthine twist becomes more plodding.
Though Duke’s film lacks the warmth and humanism of Something Wild, it’s possessed of a similarly idiosyncratic edginess.
Washington Post by Gary Arnold
Before it takes an appalling turn for the vicious, The Silent Partner seems an uncommonly clever and gripping suspense thriller. Even after the story threatens to self-destruct, you fight the impulse to suffer a major letdown, for the sake of the swell nerve-racking time you've been having up to that point.
Los Angeles Times by Gene Seymour
An undervalued 1978 thriller with an ingenious script by Curtis Hanson. [23 Feb 2001, p.18]
The New York Times by Janet Maslin
A dense, quirky, uncommonly interesting movie, this time with a high quotient of suspense.
A small but wonderful gem of a thriller: A film in which complicated people and a very complicated plot come together in a mechanism that leaves us marveling at its ingenuity.
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