Jake Gyllenhaal reteams with his Southpaw director Antoine Fuqua for this claustrophobic chamber piece, a Netflix-bound remake of filmmaker Gustav Möller’s 2018 drama of the same name.
Gyllenhaal is Joe Baylor, a police officer who we discover early on has been demoted due to an incident on the streets months earlier. On the eve of the day in which he is set to face proceedings for the matter at a disciplinary hearing. Joe is suffering from personal issues, too. He’s split from his wife Jess (Gillian Zinser) and his young daughter, and he has apparent anger issues, unable to cope with even the slightest bit of stress on the job without seemingly flying off the handle at someone.
On this fateful morning, Joe takes a call from a random caller, a distressed mother Emily (Riley Keough) who sounds like she has been taken captive by her husband, Henry (Peter Saarsgard) leaving two small children at home alone. They are heading out of town on the freeway and Emily can only communicate with Joe by pretending to be speaking to their young daughter at home. The conversation kicks off a chain of events in an intense 90 or so minutes where Joe has to tackle his own demons and help the frantic caller in extreme trouble.
All of Fuqua’s film takes place in the one location – save for a fleeting glimpse of the burning LA fires which are displayed on screens in the background of the action, and it works largely well. The key asset is Gyllenhaal who is superb in the lead, every beat of the plot relying on his reactions and expression with the only other physical members of the cast the few other call centre workers around him. Voices, of course, can be heard off-screen and Fuqua has assembled quite the cast with the aforementioned Keough, Saarsgard and Zinser joined by the likes of Paul Dano, and Ethan Hawke.
It is a device that has been used many times before, most recently in the likes of Buried with Ryan Reynolds, and Steven Knight’s brilliant Tom Hardy starrer Locke, which this is most comparable to. There’s also The Guilty, the original movie on which this is based, a film only three years old at the time of writing which is an absolutely fantastic piece of work.
This remake is not a bad movie at all – in fact, it is really well done- from Fuqua’s brilliant direction, the inventive cinematography and taut editing, through to the performances on and off screen; the film rattles along at breakneck speed with a twist part way through that will send shivers up your spine. However, if you’ve seen the original, you may be a little disappointed by the Hollywood redo as some of the content seems to have been diluted for a more broad audience. The film does falter a little following the big reveal but that’s not to say that the final reel loses impact.
A film perfect for its final destination, and it will find a satisfied audience, but for it sadly has nothing on that phenomenal Danish original from a few years ago.
The Guilty was reviewed at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival.
The Guilty
Summary
Gyllenhaal is excellent, but this remake pails in comparison to the original. However, those who are not au fait will no doubt have a great time with this taut thriller from Antoine Fuqua et al.
