Movie Review: The Guilty

Has Antoine Fuqua found a new muse? The talented director is most famous for his strong relationship with Denzel Washington, unleashing his talents in projects like Training Day and the Equalizer movies. But after Southpaw, it appears Fuqua has been seduced by the Jake Gyllenhaal hive. Or maybe it’s cause Denzel would have never just been a 911 phone operator in The Guilty: he would have equalized the situation. Yep, that makes more sense. So we’re TBD on the Gyllenhaal/Washington battle for Antoine Fuqua’s heart.

The Guilty is an American remake of a beloved 2018 Danish film. Joe Baylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) has been having a pretty crappy go of it. He’d much rather be policing in the field instead of taking 911 calls, but something bad in his past is keeping him from returning to active duty. Trapped in a situation he despises, Joe goes through the motions of his job, that is, until a strange girl named Emily (voiced by Riley Keough) calls 911 and gives off hints that something horrible is happening to her, forcing Joe’s police brain to dive in and try to help save this woman.

911 calls are inherently captivating because of the immediate stakes given by the caller. I find they’re best filmed as shorts (A Sister really grabbed my attention a couple years ago at the 2020 Oscars), as most of these calls are not much longer than a few minutes. Anytime you go longer than that, you risk straining the credulity of the situation (The Call is initially tense, but ludicrous by the end). Antoine Fuqua at least has the 2018 Danish Film as inspiration, and he mostly tells the same story as that one. We get enough backstory on Joe to help fill in the dead time between Emily related 911 calls, establishing more of Joe’s backstory to help the audience understand where he’s coming from. Obviously the most compelling stuff has to do with the mechanics of how Joe tries to help Emily out of her terrifying predicament. There’s a couple twists, same as the Danish film, that certainly surprised me but fit into the overall narrative and raise the stakes further as Joe becomes more enmeshed into Emily’s situation. 90 minutes is a long time to be chatting on the phone, and Antoine Fuqua mines about as much excitement and tension out of the situation as he can without careening the story off the rails.

But the big reason to watch this movie is Jake Gyllenhaal. The talented actor since Prince of Persia has been picking strange, exciting projects to show off his range as an actor. With this one, Gyllenhaal was probably like “This is my Locke.” Locke is the movie with Tom Hardy talking in a car the whole runtime dealing with all sorts of things going on in his life. The whole of The Guilty takes place in the 911 call center, making this essentially Gyllenhaal’s one man show. And the dude is up to the task. Gyllenhaal gives Joe layers of frustration in his day to day life, so when anything stressful pushes on him, Gyllenhaal releases these fits of rage which he then suppresses when he feels he’s getting out of control. We see all those facades Joe puts on with the different people in his life, but those lies weigh on him and are hitting their breaking point with a big life event on the horizon. Over the course of the movie, and the calls with Emily, Gyllenhaal shows Joe peeling away those frustration layers, uncovering his true feelings to find that release he’s looking for, letting go of all that pressure/stress. 90 minutes of just you is a daunting task for any actor, but Gyllenhaal has talent to spare, easily riveting the audience with his controlled chaos of a performance.

American remakes of foreign films usually lose something in translation. The Upside took away The Intouchable’s power, for example. Sometimes they match or exceed the original: I’m looking at you Departed. The Guilty is in the middle, basically retelling the same story without adding much, except for Jake Gyllenhaal’s performance, which is excellent and carries the day. I look forward to the Gyllenhaal/Washington Antoine Fuqua movie battling for the heart of the director going forward, maybe with the American version of Another Round?

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