The Guilty: The Buzz, The Breakdown, and the Silence Between Calls
The announcement of The Guilty by Netflix was exciting. Especially, since it was a remake of the Danish thriller Den Skyldige by Gustav Möller, not to mention the starring role of Jake Gyllenhaal as a cop demoted to 911 dispatcher, who was losing both a crisis and a psyche. It was and still is, intense, minimalistic and performance driven. At the time, the pandemic offered limited spectacle and the drama helped to fill the vacancy, especially during the time the storytelling was integrated into the living space and the audiences began to crave more intimate performance.
The Weight of Expectation
While the buzz sought to answer whether Hollywood would cover the claustrophobic story as expertly as the original, Sebophiles, players and streamers of the cinema loved Jenn and Cody and fabulously romance the and camping scene in Möller’s barred castle fortress, were, of course, uneasy. Gyllenhaal’s and Möller’s fans, however, were more than excited, likely wet, and astronomically excited to see Gyllenhaal who had gone from a Nightcrawler to a hero in Marvel’s Spider-Man: Far From Home to silence. Expected by the and and deep excitement was to see the transition of a character from and obsession from silence to complete as.
Media outlets hinted at the potential for an acting showcase. Consider one individual facing the stark isolation of a collapsing system. Consider one individual battling a collapsing system. Audiences anticipated an emotional thriller and a psychological drama containing shocking revelations. Expectation was for a thriller that was, at the bare minimum, an emotional experience.
Inside the Call Room: A Story Retold
The film maintains a tightly bound narrative. After a controversial incident in the line of duty, LAPD officer Joe Baylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) is reassigned to 911 dispatch. Joe is restless in the sterile confines of the call center, burdened not only by the stress of his pending court case and a crumbling family, but also the psychological case he is building for himself.
Then comes the call. A woman, seemingly kidnapped, whispers into the line. Joe, desperately piecing together her situation and ignoring warning signs, clings to fragments of information. Over the course of the night, attempts to redeem a stranger only to realize she and the rest of the situation are victims in his mosaic of a fractured system. Attempting to redeem himself by saving a captor, Joe is disillusioned by the suffocating abstractions of fractured justice.
Joe’s emotional arc is painful and masterfully done. He begins as a man who commands authority and is quick to judge and give orders. The unraveling of the character shows how his arrogance transforms into guilt. The final revelation of the title ‘The Guilty’ becomes clear. He himself is guilty of the radical and brutal act of violence. He is the guilty one. Not just the unseen villains on the other end of the line.
What Worked and What Faltered
The Guilty attempts to capture the original’s minimalist suspense and claustrophobia. The direction of Antoine Fuqua is almost entirely shot in a single room and focuses on tight close-ups of a sweating and emotionally unraveling Gyllenhaal. The phantom sound of sirens, muffled voices, a slamming car door, and a crying child build the unseen world of the film. These auditory cues, unseen world cues, brilliantly, in the best of moments, keep the audience as trapped as Joe.
Where some reviewers admired this intensity, others believed the Hollywood polish compromised the rawness of the original. The Danish film thrived on musical silence, holding back on the score, and keeping the performance restrained. In the case of Fuqua, one feels that he sometimes goes too far, trying too hard, crossing the line, the score becomes too much, the deliveries of the performance too dramatized. The subtle thriller risks dropping into melodrama.
Despite this, Gyllenhaal’s performance remained the focus of online discourse and, for many, Fuqua’s version worked. The story’s streaming format allowed it to be consumed by many without the baggage of comparison.
Part of The Guilty’s impact stemmed from Gyllenhaal himself. He was at an interesting point in his career, having moved between indie darlings and studio spectacles. He had the challenge of trying to find a more interesting role without getting swallowed by franchise noise.
COVID-19 concerns motivated producers of The Guilty to adopt even more stringent safety measures. Following a recent COVID contact, Fuqua directed filming from a van. Since he produced the film as well, Gyllenhaal assumed a dual leadership role on set. In interviews, he recalled the filming as “emotionally exhausting, like theater trapped in a pressure cooker.” There is also a fatigue visible on his performance, on the edge in his voice as though some of it were not acted but rather lived.
Camera Tricks
Despite spending virtually the entire film with the camera on Gyllenhaal’s face, the film does have a remarkable supporting cast that includes Ethan Hawke, Riley Keough, Paul Dano, and Peter Sarsgaard. The film makers made some interesting creative decisions that included allowing these very recognizable actors to play only voice roles. In the collection of very tense scenes, this decision also triggered a pleasing sense of recognition with the audience as they tried to guess who the voice belonged to.
For Riley Keough, the voice of kidnapped woman Emily, the role hit closest to home. In a conversation after the release, she reflected on the distance and isolation she felt while recording with Gyllenhaal. “I wasn’t looking at Jake, I wasn’t playing off anyone—I was just a voice, which felt like being trapped in a void. That loneliness was real.”
The Noise Around the Silence
What didn’t get reported in the film’s press was the global pandemic’s impact on the production of a single-location thriller. Crew members reported the logistical madness of filming with a skeleton crew, sanitizing sets, virtually rehearsing scenes, and sanitizing everything in the theatre. At one point, the scared production crew was going to lose the film altogether. The fact the film was finished and in the can was a minor miracle in and of itself.
There was, however, a quieter, self-restraint, social media controversy. Fans of the Danish original, which was available and accessible on multiple streaming platforms, openly criticized the need to “Americanize” the story. It diluted the sharp social commentary on systemic mistrust and replaced it with a generic, predictable arc of redemption. While these niche debates were limited, they shaped the release of the film as much as the film itself.
A Confession Style Thriller
With The Guilty, I even saw it as an archetypal Netflix release. But, as I would later come to realize, it is an artifact of the pandemic. The film was made under restrictions about a man under restrictions. Ethan Hawke’s performance was a brilliant piece of acting, shaped by the same exhaustion that we, the audience, were feeling. The audience’s fatigue was mirrored by the world. The film was made to underwhelm the audience, and it was a disappointing film. Even as the film was underwhelming, there was no denying the haunting effect of those silences between the calls where, in the static, guilt, Joe’s and ours, hung suffocatingly dense.
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