An English-language remake of 2018 Danish drama Den Skyldige, The Guilty is available to watch right now on Netflix.
The prospect of watching Jake Gyllenhaal making phone calls for 90 minutes never sounded so compelling…even if the film’s action never leaves the 9-1-1 emergency call centre in which it takes place. That’s right, we only see Gyllenhaal’s cop character Joe, and the life-or-death kidnapping situation he’s desperately trying to solve over the phone.
Don’t let its bare-bones setting fool you: there’s some serious big-budget talent in this thriller. Training Day director Antoine Fuqua and True Detective writer Nic Pizzolatto are behind the camera, whilst Riley Keough, Peter Sarsgaard, and Ethan Hawke provide the voices on the other end of the call.
The trailer below only shows us Gyllenhaal, though, mostly desk-bound and tasked with conveying the entire film’s stakes right there on his stubbly face. Danish actor Jakob Cedergren received acclaim for the same role back in 2018, praised for “anchoring the whole film.” We have no doubt Donnie Darko can pull off the same feat.
With his desperate caller unable to let her kidnapper know that she’s speaking to law enforcement, Joe must act carefully, using everything at his disposal to remotely help the victim. What that looks like will be the main question of the film—just how much can he help, with only their conversation to work from?
But the case may have troubling parallels with the officer’s own dark secrets, forcing us to question whether he too could be…The Guilty. *suspenseful synth music kicks in*
