An emergency call sinks in its claws in The Guilty, the latest from director Antoine Fuqua.
A remake of the 2018 Danish film of the same name, because people can’t just watch that film, The Guilty follows a disgraced police officer working the phones for 911. Bored and inured to the tragedies he hears every day, he skates through his job until he gets an unusual call from a woman. She’s speaking in code and he figures out that she’s being held hostage, leaving him to walk her through the dangerous situation without alerting her captor.
The Danish film drew worldwide attention for its ability to build tension without leaving the call room, its mundane setting juxtaposed by the drama unfolding in the man’s headphones. It’ll be a difficult trick to replicate, but Fuqua is a good man to attempt it. He’s done plenty of thrillers like The Equalizer series and Training Day, but the containment of this story will be a new challenge.
What’s not new is his leading man, Jake Gyllenhaal, who previously worked with him on the boxing movie Southpaw. Due to the concept, Gyllenhaal is basically the man of the movie, so it’s no surprise he picked up the remake rights through his production company Nine Stories as a starring vehicle. He assembled a good team around him, but can they justify an English-language version? We’ll see.
The Guilty is directed by Antoine Fuqua and stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Ethan Hawke, and Riley Keough. It will have a limited theatrical release in the US starting September 24th, 2021 and will be released on Netflix worldwide on October 1st.
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