Call-center thriller The Guilty gives Jake Gyllenhaal a volatile one-man show
The star's performance is about all that distinguishes this remake from the Danish original
Film Reviews Jake Gyllenhaal
Somewhere near the nexus of vanity and ambition lies the allure of the one-man show. What actor can resist the siren call of this challenge, the opportunity to detach the tether of support and become a lone pillar of performance? In the single-location, real-time suspense contraption The Guilty, it’s Jake Gyllenhaal who steps, at last, into the spotlight alone. He’s been cast as a disgraced cop chained to a desk, a phone, and a life-or-death crisis unfolding somewhere in the city beyond his view. A couple other actors pass briefly through his periphery, tossing off a line or two, and a few more serve as offscreen scene partners—we hear their voices on the other end of the line. But for most of its brisk 90 minutes, The Guilty is just Gyllenhaal, in tight close-up, constructing a movie out of sweat and tears alone: a glorified radio play of a thriller whose thrills are generated almost entirely through his reactions.
Gyllenhaal’s character, Joe Baylor, is an LAPD officer relocated to the professional purgatory of a drab, sparsely manned emergency call center while awaiting judgement for something he did in the field. (This something won’t be revealed until the climax, but if you were paying attention in 2020—or, you know, any time throughout the history of policing—you can probably ballpark its nature.) Early into the movie, which leaves the office setting only through a very brief cutaway and bookending establishing shots of the city, Joe’s boredom and scarcely disguised hostility towards nearly everyone dialing him up is disrupted by a true emergency: a distraught woman (voiced by Riley Keough), calling from a car and not speaking freely, who he quickly intuits has been kidnapped by her estranged husband (Peter Sarsgaard). From here, Joe leaps into action without leaping off his post—making frantic phone calls to other departments, trying to pinpoint the woman’s changing whereabouts, justifying shady means through the apparent virtue of their ends.
If all of this sounds familiar, it’s because The Guilty is based on a recent Danish thriller of the same name. To call it a faithful remake would be an understatement: Though relocated to a California ravaged by wildfires (the film was a pandemic production, filmed late last autumn), the story unfolds in an almost identical fashion. Scene for scene, twist for twist, sometimes line for line, it’s the same movie. Beyond the automatic baggage gained by making the protagonist an American cop, the only significant addition is a subplot involving Joe’s own marital troubles and his persistent attempts to get his daughter on the phone. It’s a frankly rather unnecessary bid to provide the character more “dimension,” and to personalize his crusade, as though the original’s general swipe for redemption weren’t motive enough. Otherwise, this had to have been the easiest paycheck hot-shot screenwriter Nic Pizzolatto (True Detective) ever earned; Google Translate probably deserves a co-writer credit.
The Guilty also reunites director Antoine Fuqua with the star of his bombastic boxing drama Southpaw, and returns him to the setting of his most well-regarded movie, Training Day. It is, for the filmmaker, an exercise in minimalism, abstracting the violence and chaos of the city into an unfathomable offscreen force, blazing around the borders of an insulated outpost like the real-life inferno polluting the air. Fuqua, rarely deviating from the original’s refusal to deviate, understands that the tension of this material stems largely from the helplessness Joe feels as a disembodied lifeline, limited in his capacity to intervene by the imprecise technology at his disposal and his (in)ability to control the efforts of colleagues with a wider jurisdiction. There is, perhaps, a karmic irony in his crucible—a man who’s abused his power suddenly feeling very powerless—and a philosophical stance in the literal limits of his perspective. The Guilty becomes, at some point, a drama about false assumptions; the film doesn’t need to directly broach the topic of race for an implied critique of law enforcement to emerge from the smoke.
Most of that, of course, is right there in the original, free to watch now on Hulu and a tick better than the American film it’s inspired, by virtue of getting there first and without minor but superfluous concessions to an audience’s presumed desire to better sympathize with its isolated hero. If there’s a good reason for a viewer to return to this claustrophobic scenario, in full knowledge of both its revelations and the fact that they’re unaltered, it lies of course with Gyllenhaal, giving it his volcanic all in a film which keeps him at the center of nearly every frame. He screams, he swears, he sobs, he sweats bullets, he even brings a little of that amusing signature testiness that’s punched up stock characters—like the put-upon detective of Prisoners—on his resume. One-man shows have their rewards for the audience, too, at least when the actor being showcased puts everything on the table like Gyllenhaal does here.
46 Comments
Having seen the original, I think I’ll skip this one for a few years/decade and have good unseen Gyllenhaal material. Which is a nice thing to have.
yah the original definitely mucked the ending, but other than that it was a tense watch and sure will be a great showcase by Jake.
“unseen Gyllenhaal material”
you mean his ass?
Nope….I think his ass was a co-star in “Jarhead”…It was wearing a Santa thong.
while awaiting judgement for something he did in the field. (This something won’t be revealed until the climax, but if you were paying attention in 2020—or, you know, any time throughout the history of policing—you can probably ballpark its nature.)Ah. Accepting bribes to overlook the existence of the nearby speakeasy while swinging around his nightstick and saying “Move along, boyo, nothing to see here” in an offensive Irish brogue.
And here I thought it had to do with hustling Huguenots into the Bastille!
He was selling turnips to both sides during The Hundred Years Legume War.
but was he rakish enough to wear an onion in his belt?
I hope so. ‘Rakish’ is such an awesome word.
Abraham Simpson was quite the roue
It’s a waste to use Gyllenhaal for any character who isn’t either a megalomaniac or a deranged, bug-eyed lunatic.
Well, he DOES play a cop in this…
How do you rate “Enemy”?
Sufficiently crazed.
Or a bug-eyed insomniac. Or a bug-eyed sous chef. Or a bug-eyed mortician with a secret. Or a bug-eyed alcoholic air traffic controller. Or a bug-eyed trash collector who gets mixed up in a mafia hit.
Or a wide-eyed dreamer looking up to the heavens like he did in his first films… Donnie “Bubble Boy” Darko gazing up at an October Sky.
That’s the only thing I really liked him in.
So he’s perfect for a Trump bio-pic!
Come on, now.The second screenshot suggests he is also very good at squinting.
Sounds similar to Locke. Which is literally just Tom Hardy in a car, frantically making phone calls in real time. Very good film.Anyway, I was already sold on this by the mere presence of Gyllenhaal. (ehhh what can I say) So sign me up.
Had I read a description of that film ahead of time I might not have watched it, but having gone in blind I was transfixed from the beginning and watched it straight through.
Sounds a lot like the 2013 Halle Berry vehicle, “The Call”. Even has a similar poster of a silhoutted face covered with words.Hopefully it won’t end in the same shlock Hollywood ending though.
I don’t know how “The Call” ends, but since I have seen the Danish film this is remaking, I’m going to say they are very probably different.
Jesus that was 8 years ago?
I’m always saying “Time isn’t real” to justify my afternoon naps, but damn if that didn’t rock me to my core.
wasn’t there also some nicole kidman movie where shes trapped in some attic and manages to hook up a phone but can only call one number and then shenanigans ensue or something?edit: whoops was kim basinger in “cellular”
Maybe Kidman will star in a remake.
I didn’t see The Call. I watched this last night and I do not recall being this engaged in a movie in a long time. I have no special affinity for Jake Gyllenhaal, I like him well enough as an actor, but man he sold this. You don’t necessarily have to like his character, he’s rather rude to his coworkers, but I didn’t think he was doing anything particularly shady to figure out how to find the husband and wife. It’s only 90 minutes long, it’s definitely worth a watch.
For a movie with no other actors it sure has a lot of other actors.CastJake Gyllenhaal, Riley Keough, Peter Sarsgaard, Eli Goree, Ethan Hawke
Except for another 911 dispatcher and one or two female police officers in the 911 Center, all those actors are only doing voice work. That’s what it meant.
I’m sorry, I believe you were referring to Aaron Rodgers’ biggest fan there?HEY RODGERS!
Bill Burr. I recognized his voice immediately
OK, say three things that never ever ever go together. Begin!
Uh…ok…”call center”, “thriller” and, uh, “Jake Gyllenhaal”.
If it’s based on a recent Danish thriller, that’s why it doesn’t sound familiar.
I hadn’t heard of the Danish film this is based on, but it did remind me of Une Soeur the Belgian short film that was nominated for an Oscar last year. A woman working as a 911 dispatch gets a call from a wife attempting to steer them to come save her from domestic disturbance while trying to appear like she is calling her sister.
On Marc Maron’s podcast last week, Steve Buscemi said he was about to start directing a one-character movie about a woman counselor at a mental health crisis hotline center. He couldn’t reveal the actress, so probably a big name. I was hoping Tilda Swinton ( in the great one-woman Almodovar short, The Human Voice) but probably not. I like more movies doing this, but they all don’t have to be thrillers with phone calls. Bring back the one-person stage show as film. ( I still haven’t seen Soderbergh’s Spaulding Gray movie.)
So, like The Phone Call but with fewer characters.
I don’t know when Jake Gyllenhaal decided to model his acting style off Nic Cage, but it works better for Nic Cage, and the majority of the time, it doesn’t even really work for Nic Cage.
Nic Cage wishes he was half the actor Gyllenhaal is
His acting technique DOES depend on having a steady supply of comic books and young asian wives.
Pig was great, if a bit of a slower pace for a Nic Cage movie, and he was much more subdued for the vast majority of it, but he did get a few chances to cut loose. I highly recommend it.
I don’t know if this is the case with the original, but this was the most depressing film I’ve seen for a long time. Is there a record for the most time during a film that somebody is crying? Even if you’re only hearing them crying?
I thought it was terrifying, probably not the right word, tension filled, but I bought into the premise after the first phone call. The plot twists were good. I teared up at the last one at the end (not his confessing). Maybe because I’m a huge fan of Southland, and realize that cops can be great people, or they can be huge assholes, or a little of each.
Tons of little things bugged me in this movie. Like how the movie runs in real time (90mins), but somehow 5 hrs also have elapsed by the end. Or like why was he even working an overnight shift if he had a big court hearing the next morning. Or why did the husband and wife keep returning his calls thru 911, even though they both had his cell number… why was he getting asthma attacks from sitting at a desk? Wasn’t he a big tuff a street cop? 🤔
I watched this like it was his End of Watch character falling apart after the death of his partner.
This film was so irritating.