For me Fuqua is an overrated director but I very much enjoyed his Magnificent Seven remake. So I was curious of him taking on this remake of a Danish film with an interesting premise. There have been films before which focus on a 911 operator who has to manage a difficult call, from a disappointing Halle Berry vehicle to a recent Oscar nominated short that was incredibly powerful. So how do Fuqua and Gyllenhaal do with this idea?
The Guilty is one of those American remakes that copies its source and doesn't offer much new. But it also doesn't fumble the story. Gyllenhaal is good in a role that demands him to be everything. The whole story is him talking to different people on the phone. It's all told from his limited point of view and he manages it.
Fuqua competently builds the suspense and makes for a tense and thrilling story. I'm not sure he sells all the twists that need to happen to make the story work but it's still a gripping watch.
Spoilers: The film struggles with one issue which I'm not sure it resolves. The "twist" in the movie is that you are lead to believe the 911 call is about a woman being abducted, but by the end you understand she is suffering from mental illness and her husband, and supposed abductor, is taking her to get care after she had hurt their children. Some of the plot points in this do require a lot of convenient stretching of belief to make this whole plot play out but when we have a culture where victims of domestic abuse are often not believed, this plot twist is problematic and the film never quite deals with this.
The Guilty
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Writer: Nic Pizzolatto
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