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After its painstaking and unnecessary remake of The Magnificent Seven five years ago and a sequel, Equalizer 2, two years later, director Antoine Fuqua repackaged another pre-existing entity by the guilty. If that doesn’t sound familiar to you, it’s because the claustrophobic and pressurized original Danish thriller it’s based on was only seen in the United States at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. This new American version takes place also in one location, a Los Angeles 911 dispatch call center from where the cops try to calm the lunatics and troublemakers over the phone, and this is justified by the opportunity for Jake Gyllenhaal to deliver a trick by force; it’s basically the whole show.
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Shot in 11 days during Covid, this tightly coiled Netflix drama which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival is the kind of story television loved in the 1950s, an urgent, actor-centric story and actor-centered. and acting bravery. The original, called The skwas, was written by Gustav Moller and Emil Nygaard Albertson, and it was adapted by Nic Pizzolatto, who wrote the screenplay for Fuqua Magnificent Seven, as well as numerous episodes of Real detective.
The setting is a large modern room, where Joe Baylor (Gyllenhaal), cut into a team, takes his place at the high-tech communication hub and prepares for all kinds of emergencies that inevitably arise on a daily basis in the big city. The place looks well-funded, with large panoramic screens showing callers’ whereabouts in the greater LA area, with Baylor appearing entirely on top of his high-pressure job.
However, this calm does not last long. It turns out that Joe has been separated from his ex-wife Emily and his young daughter for six months. A sordid and worse kidnapping has taken place, there is chaos, crying and screaming on the phone and mischief from the supposed hero, who spends most of the time trying to counsel, insist, cajole , to intervene and otherwise play a role in the lives of several people in various states of distress.
the guilty isn’t literally a one-man show but it looks more or less like it. As the situation worsens, the cracks in the professional plating of the man begin to appear and then crumble, as we witness a modern, technologically facilitated hell of its own making. It is not a pretty sight.
Dealing with what could easily have seemed like a cramped, stage-bound piece, Fuqua pushes to keep the pace fast, and her frequent cuts give a sense of propulsion to a piece that takes place in very tight spaces.
Gyllenhaal is the center of everything here and grabs the viewer’s attention as his character desperately tries, with waning success, to cover his tracks. As is often the case with long, restrained endings, the final revelations and accounts are a bit overworked, but they unfold quickly and aren’t theatrical to say the least.
At the end, the guilty is not a pleasant sitting position, but he moves with strength and speed and does what he sets out to do with a sense of style and purpose.
RELATED: Jake Gyllenhaal and Antoine Fuqua on The Unique Challenges of Making Their Thriller “The Guilty” During Covid – Q&A at the Toronto Film Festival
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