Directed by Antoine Fuqua
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Riley Keough and Peter Sarsgaard

In my February 2019 review of the excellent Danish thriller, The Guilty (Den Skyldige), I mentioned that an American remake was already in development and will star Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead role. While I’m pleased to say that this American edition almost entirely mirrors the plot trajectory of the original, it unfortunately is never able to summon the same anticipation or spring the element of surprise via its twists produced by its superior Danish counterpart. 

On the other hand, first time viewers who don’t feel overly confined by its singular setting should be engrossed by experiencing how the central plot and sub-plots both merge and unravel.

Operating in a similar environment seen in the 2013 Halle Berry thriller The Call, The Guilty is almost entirely set inside an emergency call centre. Working a night shift while the Calfornian wildfires are raging, LAPD police officer Joe Baylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) is evidently super stressed about something more than the influx of calls coming in. All that we know early on is that his professional and personal worlds are colliding and falling apart on the eve of a hearing over a past incident. In no mental state whatsoever to be working, Joe takes a call from a distressed woman who has been abducted and is seemingly in very close proximity to her abductor. Her chances of survival and at being rescued entirely depend upon Joe’s ability to elicit specific information from her in an imprecise manner as a matter of urgency.

I must give credit to director Antoine Fuqua, who managed to shoot The Guilty in just 11 days and directed the entire film from a van with monitors rather than on a soundstage with the actors because a close contact tested positive for COVID-19 just days before filming began. Taking that into consideration, this production is a well-made thriller that effortlessly transitions locations from Denmark in the original to the U.S in this remake. If anything, the writing and characterisation isn’t as grounded here and therefore works unfavourably to this remake. I just could not feel matching levels of empathy for Jake Gyllenhaal’s Joe Baylor as I could Jakob Cedergren’s Asger Holm due to the intensity in temperament applied to Joe compared to the more subtle and gradual implosion of Asger.

The Guilty is available to stream exclusively via Netflix

Review by Leigh for Moviedoc

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