The Guilty

UK Release Date. 1 October 2021
Certification. 15
Running Time. 1 hour 30 min
Director. Antoine Fuqua
Cast. Paul Dano, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ethan Hawke, Riley Keough, Christina Vidal Mitchell, Peter Sarsgaard.
Rating. 70%

Review.

Adapted from a 2018 Danish film, Den Skyldige directed by Gustav Möller, The Guilty is a tense and taught psychological drama. The Swedish director (Gustav Möller), helped True Detective writer, Nic Pizzolatto adapt the script for The Guilty, which sees Los Angeles replace Copenhagen as the setting for the night's traumatic events.

The less plot I reveal, the better. But Jake Gyllenhaal plays Officer Joe Baylor, a 911 operator in an emergency call centre. Elements of the film evoke comparisons with Brad Anderson's The Call (2013), starring Halle Berry, but director Antoine Fuqua sensibly confines the eschewing drama to one location, the emergency call centre.

Given almost every inch of the screen, and with the camera relentlessly focused on him for almost the entire 90 minutes run time, Jake Gyllenhaal's performance is impressive. Gyllenhaal has already established himself as a versatile and talented actor, comfortable in pursuing roles adjacent to the mainstream offering. Whilst Gyllenhaal has made the occasional foray into big-budget projects such as The Day After Tomorrow, Spider-Man: Far From Home and Ambulance, he has made a name for himself in more low-key productions, the likes of Donnie Darko, Brokeback Mountain, Prisoners, Nightcrawler and Wildlife. In The Guilty Gyllenhaal paints a portrait of a man close to breaking point. Every nuanced gesture, every pained expression and every sudden outburst carry the weight of the film. Cinematographer Maz Makhani's unflinching close-ups fuel much of the immediate tension and Pizzolato's script is the perfect compliment, slowly revealing details of Baylor's back story and maintaining the tension through a series of increasingly disturbing phone calls. Compared to Training Day, Olympus Has Fallen or The Equalizer, this is as restrained as I've seen Antoine Fuqua. There is a confident, efficient creativity associated with The Guilty.

Now, to track down Gustav Möller's original.