Movie Review: The Guilty

Remakes of foreign films are often looked at as something less than the original work they were based upon. Granted, there have been a few that could be considered superior to their counterparts (David Fincher’s 2011 version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo could be considered one of these successes). The new film, The Guilty, however, is not one of these such remakes. Instead, it is a tedious exercise in overwrought mood lighting and forced emotional response through facial expressions that does little to warrant that anymore of these remakes be allowed to exist moving forward.

Taking place during a single shift at a 911 dispatch call center, The Guilty follows operator Joe Baylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) as he tries desperately to save a caller he believes to be in a life-threatening situation.

Director Antoine Fuqua and screenwriter Nic Pizzolatto last worked together on their remake of The Magnificent Seven in 2016. Like that film, their current collaboration is based on another, far superior film. This time out, the original Danish film, Den Skyldige, written by Gustav Möller and Emil Nygaard Albertsen and directed by Möller, succeeds in providing the taught suspense and anxiety that is needed to propel the story along in the manner it needs to be. Fuqua’s film relies far too heavily on the un-hinged performance of Gyllenhaal to provide the impetus for each scene leading to the next, a strategy that simply doesn’t work.

Jake Gyllenhaal in “The Guilty.” © 2021 Netflix, Inc.

Gyllenhaal’s portrayal of cop-on-the-edge Baylor often feels cribbed from Fuqua’s films with Denzel Washington like Training Day (2001) and The Equalizer films (2014, 2018), or, possibly even modeled after Mel Gibson’s work as Martin Riggs in Lethal Weapon (1987) and that film’s endless sequels. The fallout of this is that Baylor is far less sympathetic, let alone heroic, when needed and that leaves everything more hollow than it should be. The various voices heard on the other end of Baylor’s headset are played by the like of Ethan Hawke, Riley Keough, Peter Sarsgaard, Bill Burr, and Paul Dano. But, even that does little to add to the dramatic weight of what’s transpiring onscreen or give any of the consequences any real power.

Similarly, there is nothing noteworthy in the rest of the construction of the film. The police station seems far more open than the claustrophobic tight quarters one would expect to see in a real-life setting and the shift from that location to a darkened room near the middle of the film feels unnecessary and done solely to turn down the lights in an attempt to forcibly reset the film’s mood. Even the reveal of Baylor’s “error” that landed him on 911-call duty feels remarkably ill-constructed and haphazard, at least as it plays out in this instance. There is simply no logical reason for things to end up as they do other than that is what it said in the script.

Although everyone involved in The Guilty has done better work than this throughout their careers, the sum of all their parts at work in this film amount to a tangled, often dull web of half-truths and lies masquerading as character growth and drama.

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Mike Tyrkus

Editor in Chief at CinemaNerdz.com

An independent filmmaker, co-writer and director of over a dozen short films, the Editor in Chief of CinemaNerdz.com has spent much of the last three decades as a writer and editor specializing in biographical and critical reference sources in literature and the cinema, beginning in February 1991 reviewing films for his college newspaper. He was a member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, as well as the group's webmaster and one-time President for over a decade until the group ceased to exist. His contributions to film criticism can be found in Magill's Cinema Annual, VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever (of which he was the editor for nearly a decade until it too ceased to exist), the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, and the St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia (on which he collaborated with editor Andrew Sarris). He has also appeared on the television program Critic LEE Speaking alongside Lee Thomas of FOX2 and Adam Graham, of The Detroit News. He currently lives in the Detroit area with his wife and their dogs.

@miketyrkus

Mike Tyrkus

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