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Netflix’s The Guilty is a psychological showcase for Jake Gyllenhaal

The film largely takes place inside a 911 call center

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Twenty years ago, Antoine Fuqua directed the well-regarded Denzel Washington/Ethan Hawke thriller Training Day . That’s easy to remember, because the trailer for nearly every movie Fuqua has made since then has dropped “from the director of Training Day ” as a major enticement. (Other similarly successful movies from fall 2001 do not share this distinction. “From the director of Don’t Say a Word ” hasn’t become universal marketing shorthand.) It’s indicative of how closely associated Fuqua has become with cop movies, even though they only make up a small portion of his filmography. He’s done sci-fi ( Infinite ), a boxing picture ( Southpaw ), and a Western (the remake of The Magnificent Seven ), alongside plenty of non-cop action movies and Denzel vehicles.

But he’s still “the director of Training Day ,” as if the last 20 years never happened. For once, though, that feels appropriate: His new Netflix movie The Guilty is an unexpected companion piece to his past police stories. It’s a cop-on-the-edge thriller where the cop, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, is confined to just a couple of rooms.

In this remake of a 2018 Danish film , Los Angeles police officer Joe Baylor (Gyllenhaal) is answering 911 calls after he’s demoted. At first, using the job as punishment sounds like an insult aimed at the system’s professional operators. But after a while, Joe’s assignment starts to feel like a punishment for them, too, given his constant testiness toward his lower-key colleagues. Joe is clearly itching to get away from his desk and back on the streets, and while on the job, he takes several personal calls alluding to a rapidly approaching hearing that he hopes will get him there. He also makes personal calls about his obligatory marriage on the rocks, complete with disputed child custody.

But a distraction from whatever unpleasantness awaits him outside of the dispatch room arrives when he receives a call from a sobbing woman. She’s in a van against her will, being driven someplace. There’s a man shouting threats in the background. She needs help, and too many of the on-duty emergency responders are busy with California wildfires.

Stressed by the situation but seemingly enlivened by the opportunity to play cop again, Joe makes a variety of calls to different branches of law enforcement while researching the case, trying to help the woman from his desk. The Guilty is a single-location thriller; outside of a few establishing shots and brief fades into fuzzy imagery, it stays in the call center with Joe. Fuqua got his start in music videos, and it’s easy to imagine a version of this movie from earlier in his career relying heavily on fast cuts, impressionistic lighting, and dramatic angles to juice the limited action. Though there’s a little of that here, Fuqua more often settles down his style in the process of sustaining the material over a 90-minute runtime. As Gyllenhaal becomes more frenzied, the movie uses fewer cuts — some of its tensest climactic scenes play out in extended static shots of the actor’s face.

Underneath The Guilty ’s pulpy setup — not so different from the 2013 Halle Berry thriller The Call — is a more psychological human drama involving Joe’s troubled history and frazzled state of mind. As with Fuqua’s other cop thrillers, the balance of genre thrills and would-be social relevance isn’t always graceful. Much of The Guilty involves dangling the threat of child endangerment in front of the audience, chased with a treatment of mental illness that falls somewhere between empathy and exploitation. Some of this is mitigated by what seems like a genuine interest in how to tell a cop story in 2021. Fuqua and his fellow grim-pulp specialist Nic Pizzolatto, the True Detective writer who adapted this screenplay, clearly didn’t want to make a tin-eared throwback to earlier eras of police stories.

Though Fuqua’s films haven’t shied away from the misdeeds of law enforcement — recall the showy, malevolent character that won Washington his Training Day Oscar — they’re usually juxtaposed with innocent, honest police. The Guilty only really has one “real” cop on screen at all; the rest are voices on the other end of the phone, or officers who aren’t irritated about their full-time work at the call center. The phone-only cast is impressive: Peter Sarsgaard, Riley Keough, Ethan Hawke, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and Paul Dano all call in, as if this were a supersized episode of Frasier .

But Gyllenhaal is the whole show, and his irritable, driven, struggling character doesn’t exactly glorify his line of work. His unpleasantness gives the movie its edge, and perhaps also an unearned sense of gravitas. In spite of all the impressive intensity Gyllenhaal summons as the movie slowly clarifies the anguish of Joe’s full story arc, his presence feels like a shortcut, albeit an impressive one — a near-guarantee that the movie will be taken more seriously. Maybe it should be; there’s value in addressing serious problems from the confines of a gimmicky pulp thriller. But as with Training Day , a memorable performance sometimes dominates the drama, rather than serving it.

The Guilty is now streaming on Netflix.

Review: Antoine Fuqua, Jake Gyllenhaal mostly justify remake of ‘The Guilty’

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In Antoine Fuqua’s tense and toothy “The Guilty,” Jake Gyllenhaal shrugs and mugs. He cringes and cries. He snaps and snarls and takes frequent blasts of his inhaler, which is handy because, like the oxygenation equivalent of a movie drinking game, these interludes can serve as a useful reminder to viewers to breathe, despite the film doing its twisty, panic-attack best to make hysterical asthmatics of us all.

It’s unmistakably a remake of Gustav Möller’s largely unimprovable 2018 Danish original , but if it scarcely differentiates itself on a story level from “Den Skyldige,” Fuqua’s faithful reworking, given a gloss of L.A. relevance by screenwriter Nic Pizzolatto, does lean heavily into the one pleasure Möller’s film couldn’t boast: Gyllenhaal , glaring and growling, cracking up and breaking down, gasping down lungfuls of Ventolin the way a man underwater might suck on a snorkel.

The drowning man is Joe, a cop on suspension from street duty pending the next day’s trial, who has in the meantime been busted down to headset work as a 911 emergency operator. At first his night’s drama is chiefly personal, as amid 911 calls that range from amusingly whiny to bluntly abusive — not helped by Joe’s judgy, unpleasant phone manner — he also fields calls from a pushy L.A. Times reporter (Edi Patterson), from his recently estranged wife (Gillian Zinser) and from his erstwhile commanding officer (Ethan Hawke), all concerned for different reasons with his court case.

The dynamic changes — or perhaps Joe just finds a way to project all this stress outward onto something he thinks he might be able to control — when he picks up a call from Emily ( Riley Keough ). Pretending she’s talking to her 6-year-old daughter Abby (Christiana Montoya), Emily manages to communicate that she’s been kidnapped, and that she’s in a white van, before the connection drops.

As with the original film, a lot of fun here is in tracing Joe’s thought processes as the cop in him, frustrated by the inability of the overloaded emergency service personnel to assign more resources to finding Emily, starts to work the case from all angles available to him while he’s still pinned to his three-monitor desk setup in 911 HQ.

With almost all the actors other than Gyllenhaal delivering voice-only performances (Peter Sarsgaard and Paul Dano also feature) “The Guilty” is more or less a single-location thriller, but Maz Makhani’s glossily low-key camerawork, forever peeking at Joe from behind a computer and finding new angles of closeup on his strained, intense features, is varied enough to suggest claustrophobia without actively inducing it, and to give editor Jason Ballantine plenty of options for pacy, jittery cutting. And the mostly-one-guy-in-mostly-one-location approach also feels unusually well-suited to the laptops and living rooms that its Netflix release inevitably guarantees, not to mention being a canny way to make a slick genre entertainment under pandemic restrictions. (Fuqua directed much of the 11-day shoot from a van parked some way away following a close-contact COVID-19 scare).

Given its beat-for-beat similarity to the original, only this time with forest fires blazing in the background and a light dusting of very current American issues around an urban community grown understandably mistrustful of the police, “The Guilty” cannot singlehandedly justify the tired Hollywood practice of remaking perfectly serviceable films from abroad. But at the risk of having my purist cinephile credentials revoked, within its own very narrow parameters it perhaps does enough to justify its own existence.

Since even the original is predicated on our nervy, direct connection to this archetypal conflicted cop enduring his long, dark night shift of the soul, there is at least a case to be made that dispensing with subtitles and embellishing the action with a little local color and one of the most reliably committed Hollywood stars at work today, is, for English-speaking audiences, the maximum-impact delivery system for these expertly tooled generic twists and turns.

It’s not like there was ever that much to lose in translation from the 2018 film, which was a lean, efficient thrilling machine in its own right. Although maybe some flaws in internal logic — how come Joe gets so few other 911 calls? Why is he working at all the night before a trial so controversial the media are covering it in force? — if they existed in the original, didn’t seem quite so glaring in Danish. But treating its predecessor as simply the slender framework on which to hang a new, marginally different interpretation of the central character, the film moves like a whippet, and gives us ample opportunity to admire the vast range of facial expressions of which Gyllenhaal is capable, while still remaining just this side of overacting.

Not to suggest “The Guilty” is “Hamlet” or anything; it does deal in some odd psychological U-turns that even Gyllenhaal can’t quite sell, as when an unnecessary interpersonal clash or a dumb outburst instantly undoes the meticulous police work Joe has invested so much in, or when he temporarily seems to forget just what his real endgame is.

Still, as a portrait of a tortured man making the exact mistakes in his search for redemption that wind up being the source of a deeper, truer salvation, and as a surprisingly compassionate deconstruction of the snap judgments we often make about gender roles and mental instability (Keough’s voice work in the last act is particularly moving in this regard), the film delivers some insight.

“Broken people save broken people” is the rather unnecessary summation provided at one point, which is mildly ironic, considering that perhaps the highest praise we can lavish on Fuqua’s solid, enjoyable, easily watchable remake, is that beyond the addition of Gyllenhaal, it doesn’t try to fix anything that wasn’t broken in the first place.

'The Guilty'

Rated: R for language throughout. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes Playing: Starts Sept. 24, The Landmark, West Los Angeles; available Oct. 1 on Netflix

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The Guilty review – Jake Gyllenhaal’s tense 911 call thriller

A glossy Netflix remake of the 2018 single-location Danish thriller about a kidnapped woman seeking help is a well-made piece of entertainment

H ere’s a tense single-location thriller directed by Antoine Fuqua, remade from Gustav Möller’s hugely admired Danish movie Den Skyldige (The Guilty) with a little more Hollywood gloss and based on the time-honoured premise of the 911 emergency operator taking a nail-biting call from a female kidnap victim who is pretending to her abductor that she is speaking to her infant daughter, and having to speak in code. (Brad Anderson’s 2013 film The Call – starring Halle Berry as the operator – had a comparable idea.)

Joe Baylor, played by a gaunt Jake Gyllenhaal , is a troubled LAPD officer with a failed marriage and failing health; he has evidently got into serious trouble over some incident at work – and keeps getting calls from the press. Now, while his case is being investigated, Joe has been busted down to what he considers the humiliatingly lowly level of emergency operator with a headset phone, taking 911 calls from the public, the vast majority of these being farcically unimportant. Meanwhile, California wildfires are creating a continuous, ambient atmosphere of crisis.

Then Joe is electrified to take the tearful call from a terrified woman, and whatever his own problems, his police savvy kicks in – he cleverly divines exactly what the situation is and how he can find out what’s happening from just a few clues. And the parallels with his own fraught family situation suggest to the agonised Joe that some kind of personal redemption is possible, and that Joe should make some desperate attempt to control and solve the entire situation from the phone. He becomes increasingly unprofessional and crazy – staying on the job after his shift ends and ignoring all the other 911 calls. Inevitably, it’s a stagey set-up, and the dramatic effect of the closeup on the officer’s sweaty face and the distant voice on the other end of the line begins to diminish over time, so Gyllenhaal has to lose it more extravagantly with shouting and temper-loss and confessional agony. But as time passes, it seems that the situation is more complicated that Joe thought – as is the question of who the title refers to. Perhaps to overcompensate for the lack of conventionally opened-out dramatic action, there is some big closeup acting from Gyllenhaal, but it’s a well-made and watchable picture of a man in the secular confessional box, a sinner forced to occupy the place of a priest.

The Guilty is released on 24 September in cinemas, and on 1 October on Netflix.

• Jake Gyllenhaal
• Toronto film festival
• Toronto film festival 2021

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The Guilty Reviews

Jake Gyllenhaal continues to show that he is one of the best actors working in the industry right now, and even with the tonal issues and the blunders at the end, there is plenty of things to enjoy and to keep yourself invested for a short runtime.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Mar 1, 2024

Fans of the original will feel like they have been put on hold listening to the same piece of music on a 90 minute loop but for new audiences, this is an edge-of-your-seat thriller than you won’t want to hang up on.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 12, 2022

{Gyllenhaal's} unhinged turn that you can practically see mentally come apart at the seams. It’s one of his best.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 9, 2022

Fuqua does add some interesting touches, such as setting his movie to the backdrop of the California wildfires. But no matter how hard the film tries, it’s never able to muster the same intensity or humanity as its Danish inspiration.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 17, 2022

The Guilty feels like a movie only meant to pander to subscribers who still cannot abide by subtitles.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 8, 2022

The rare Hollywood remake that gets it right.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 2, 2022

Film fans may bristle at the idea of yet another American remake of an acclaimed foreign film, but The Guilty is wonderfully well-made on nearly every level, with a powerhouse lead performance from Jake Gyllenhaal.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jul 14, 2022

An intense, cruel, unstoppable thriller that uses unpredictability as its engine, The Guilty suggests the answer while our pulse slowly gets back to its normal rhythm. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jul 6, 2022

It succeeds in creating a suspenseful story with good acting, even though parts of the movie seem too contrived. People who can appreciate this film the most are those who use their imagination, because a lot of the terror is what's not seen on screen.

Full Review | Mar 3, 2022

Thanks to Gyllenhaals compelling performance and tense-filled moments, The Guilty is sure to be another crowd-pleaser for Netflix. This one will indeed have folks talking.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 18, 2022

Viewers who felt emotionally eviscerated by the fast-paced original aren't likely to have the same reaction to the new version.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 12, 2022

The Guilty is not just one of the better English remakes of a foreign language film but also one of the best Netflix films of the year.

Full Review | Feb 12, 2022

The Guilty remains to be an effective dramatic thriller... it just begs the question of if this remake was necessary. The 2018 Danish version is exceptional and stands on its own.

This single-location suspense films pulpy plot makes up for its inability to conjure dramatic weight with its constant tension.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 12, 2022

The film might get a bit less mileage from its shocking reveals if youve seen the Danish title its based on, but Gyllenhaals tortured performance and Fuquas tight direction make it a compelling character study in its own right.

Full Review | Feb 11, 2022

The Guilty is a a tense thriller, but it's also a film about the titular guilt and a mental health issue that needs to be addressed more openly. It contains numerous twists and turns that thoroughly shock the audience and lead to a satisfying conclusion.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Feb 11, 2022

A police thriller in which I don't find any significant tension during the hour and a half it takes to call 911 to report the failed remake. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Jan 23, 2022

While I found parts of the story to be repetitive, and some twists and turns predictable, the emotion-driven plot and lead character performance alone are enough to justify a watch.

Full Review | Jan 6, 2022

The script, adapted by Nic Pizzolatto of True Detective, and Gyllenhaal's no-holds-barred, emotional performance make The Guilty compelling enough to override heavy-handed messaging.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 23, 2021

Not sure if we needed the redemption story for the main character but it is what it is...I thought the voice work was exceptional and the film had a good amount of suspense. Jake Gyllenhaal showcases why he is one of the best actors working right now.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 2, 2021

‘The Guilty’ Film Review: Jake Gyllenhaal’s One-Man Show Is a Hell of a Ride

Director Antoine Fuqua’s revved-up adaptation of the 2018 Danish film stays in one place but moves like a tough, efficient action flick

This review of “The Guilty” was first published on Sept. 10, 2021 after the film’s premiere at the Toronto Film Festival

Jake Gyllenhaal has given his share of searing performances in films that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, “End of Watch,” “Enemy,” Nightcrawlers,” “Demolition” and “Stronger” among them. But none of them were as completely the Jake Gyllenhaal Show as “The Guilty,” director Antoine Fuqua’s revved-up but tightly-wound adaptation of the 2018 Danish film by Gustav Möller, which premiered at TIFF on Friday.

Sure, there’s a sterling supporting cast that’s seen more than heard, but this Netflix film is a thriller that takes place entirely in two rooms, and most of the time Gyllenhaal is the only person on the screen. If it’s taut and urgent and suspenseful, which it is, it’s because all of that is on the actor’s face and in his voice.

It’s also pretty true to Möller’s film, albeit with a level of gloss and its leading man’s star power. The low-budget original, which won raves as Denmark’s Oscar submission and landed on the shortlist but wasn’t nominated, cost less than $600,000 and was purposefully grimy; Fuqua’s version is high tech by comparison, and it tweaks the ending in a way that you could say is marginally more Hollywood. But it feels similar: A more-or-less real-time race by a 911 dispatcher to figure out what’s going on with a panicked woman who calls from a car where she’s being held against her will.

Of course, this can’t be just another 911 operator on a normal day — instead, it’s a LAPD cop who’s been put on phone duty while awaiting a hearing on a shooting in which he killed a 19-year-old suspect. And it takes place on a day when wildfires are raging across Southern California, blanketing the city with smoke and raising tensions to a fever pitch.

Gyllenhaal’s Joe Baylor is hotheaded, profane (he tells one caller who wants an ambulance after a cycling accident, “Call an Uber and don’t bike drunk, a—hole!”) and clearly haunted; when one character later says “I have blood on my hands!” she could well be speaking for Joe and maybe for most of the other people in the movie.

Joe’s day starts as a series of small annoyances and irritating calls, with Paul Dano making a particular impression (on the other end of the phone line) as a self-important businessman who doesn’t want to admit that he’s been robbed by a prostitute. But things take a turn when he gets a call from a distraught woman named Emily (Riley Keough). At first Joe thinks she’s drunk, until he realizes that she’s pretending to be talking to her daughter because a man has taken her against her will and is driving her east on the 10 freeway.

From there, Emily’s case becomes an obsession for Joe. He gets the LAPD and the California Highway Patrol involved, ends up on the phone with Emily’s 6-year-old daughter and desperately tries to piece together the strands of a case that becomes more tangled and confusing with every new piece of information.

It wouldn’t be right to give away more details than that; what’s important is that we only know what Joe knows and we only see and hear what he does. Apart from opening and closing shots that take in all of Los Angeles, along with a brief, out-of-focus flash of a highway stop that Joe has requested, we never leave the rooms where Joe is stationed: a large, high-tech chamber with multiple 911 stations for operators, a hallway outside that room and a second, smaller room to which he retreats when things get particularly urgent and he wants to handle it himself. (Joe, you might have realized by now, does not play well with others.) 

“Broken people save broken people,” says another character at one point – the question is, can this particular broken person save other people and himself? And can he do it by himself, in 90 minutes, on the phone?

One of the points of the original film was that lifesaving decisions are made in dingy, run-down rooms, and the new version lacks the grungy claustrophobia of that setting. Still, the LAPD facilities make for a sleek arena for desperation, and cinematographer Maz Makhani revels in the mixture of bright screens and dark shadows that surround Gyllenhaal. The smaller room is particularly cinematic, with horizontal blinds mean that thin bands of light are cast across the actor’s face.

The voices on the other end of the phone include Keough, Dano, Ethan Hawke, Eli Goree, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Peter Sarsgaard, among others, and all do fine work. But this is Gyllenhaal’s movie to carry, and his backlog of haunted and feral characters make him an ideal choice to do it, and to make sure we never lose sight of the burden Joe carries. (The movie isn’t called “The Guilty” for nothing.)

Yes, you can question Fuqua and screenwriter Nic Pizzolatto’s decision to set the film on a day of rampaging wildfires; the stakes are already high enough once Emily calls, and having it play out on the worst day ever just makes you wonder why Joe stops getting those other calls. And you can quibble with the details of police actions and the extent to which Joe is able to hear everything that’s happening around the people that he calls.

But Fuqua, like Möller before him, doesn’t really give you time to sit back and think about it. “The Guilty” stays in one place but moves like a tough, efficient action flick; it’s a thrill ride in an office chair.  

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Guilty’ on Netflix, in Which Jake Gyllenhaal is a One-Man Actorly Wrecking Crew

Where to stream:.

• The Guilty (2021)

• Jake Gyllenhaal

'Presumed Innocent' Trailer Teases Jake Gyllenhaal's Steamy, Stressful Legal Thriller On Apple TV+

Hannah love lanier is 'road house's surprise breakout star, 'road house' director doug liman's studio star vehicles are always refreshingly uneven, unpredictable, and weirdly alive, wait, was that post malone in 'road house'.

Netflix movie The Guilty is Jake Gyllenhaal , all the time, every moment, up close and personal. This (mostly) one-man show is the American version of Gustav Moller’s Danish film Den skyldige , about a 911 operator dealing with a harrowing kidnapping situation via phone, while also staving off his own personal demons. Interesting trivia: Gyllenhaal, who also has producer credit, pitched director Antoine Fuqua by saying they’d shoot the film as a minimalist work, under tight COVID protocols, in five days; it actually took 11, which is still ridiculously quick for a feature. The result is as harrowingly intense as you’d expect for a drama that’s almost wholly close-up shots of Jake Gyllenhaal sweating buckets.

THE GUILTY : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Wildfires are eating up large swaths of California right outside of Los Angeles. Joe Baylor (Gyllenhaal) coughs, hits his inhaler, exits the restroom and seats himself at a desk. He’s an LAPD officer, demoted, now manning a phone bank. As he answers 911 calls, we begin to wonder if there are any real, serious emergencies in the L.A. area — outside the fires, of course. Joe’s getting a lot of doozies tonight, and struggles to show much sympathy. “I understand, but it’s your own fault, isn’t it?” he asks one caller, and it’s not what the caller wants to hear, whether he’s a fool Joe suffers or just someone who’s truly hurt and needs help.

Then a call comes in on Joe’s personal cell phone. A newspaper reporter. They want an interview about his case — a case that goes to court the very next day. He yells at the reporter, hangs up. His phone’s home screen is a photo of his young daughter. He calls his ex, leaves a voicemail; he knows he’s not supposed to be doing this, but he just wants to say goodnight to the kid. He’s chastised for making a personal call on the job. He calls the LAPD dispatch, and gets his former sergeant (Ethan Hawke’s voice), who assures Joe that after tomorrow, he’ll be out of that call center and back to being a regular cop. Wishful thinking? Who knows, but Joe keeps hitting his inhaler, and snapping at his coworkers in the call center, and never saying please or thank you for anything, and now he’s just dropped some Alka Seltzer.

And then, the call. A woman named Emily (Riley Keough’s voice) is pretending to talk to her daughter, but she’s talking to Joe the 911 operator. She’s distraught. Soon enough, Joe deduces that she’s been abducted, and is in a white van on the highway. Then she hangs up. He barks orders at the California Highway Patrol dispatcher (Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s voice) and the CHP officers to find the van. He calls Emily’s daughter, who’s six, and home alone with her baby brother. He calls his former partner to go check things out. He gets a call from his ex but can’t answer it right now. Have they found the van? Is it the right one? Are there any cops out there not dealing with wildfire-related emergencies? What’s Joe’s damage, anyway? He sweats. His face is red. He promised the little girl that her mother would come home, but that’s going to be a mighty task, especially when you’re stuck behind a desk with only a telephone and a tenuous grip on your own sanity.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: In Steven Knight’s Locke , Tom Hardy manages all kinds of personal and professional problems on the phone from behind the wheel of his car, pretty much in real time.

Performance Worth Watching: The film is 100 percent Gyllenhaal, so if you’re not watching him, you’ve dozed off — although Gyllenhaal gives the type of performance that does not at all encourage dozing off, so you’re absolutely watching him.

Memorable Dialogue: “Call an Uber and don’t bike drunk, asshole!” — Joe has no pity whatsoever for a poor 911 caller

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: If you’re going to watch a contrived high-drama acting exercise, you might as well watch Gyllenhaal do it: in close-up, eyes bulging, beads of sweat forming, forehead vein throbbing Beethoven’s 5th. He’s utterly convincing as a man who — no spoilers — probably did something pretty bad, and now is forced to solve a serious problem remotely when he used to be hands-on, on the frontline. Frustration boils, guilt emerges, self-loathing quietly bubbles up. But he’s heartbroken, regretful, truly concerned about this woman Emily’s well-being. Does Joe deserve our sympathy? I think so, if only to cling to idealist beliefs that good people sometimes do bad things, or that bad people deserve redemption. More realistically, I don’t see Joe as a good or bad person, but merely painfully human.

So beneath Gyllenhaal’s fraught, anxiety-ridden performance, there’s a character in the midst of a moral struggle: he’s done something wrong, now it’s time to do something right. There is nuance in Gyllenhaal’s characterization, although that doesn’t necessarily extend to the rest of the screenplay, which tries to encompass topical anxieties involving civilian-police interactions and environmental destruction — personal, social and global apocalypses all occur simultaneously. Gyllenhaal and Fuqua wind the tension tight, compelling us to get caught up in the drama, even when things get bleak or predictable, or bleakly predictable. It’s a bit too much, and a bit too much on the nose, but the film’s vigor is undeniable.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Guilty is a heavy, stressful watch, and if it isn’t too far-fetched, it’s at least a little bit fetched. Yet you can do far, far worse than watch Gyllenhaal work like this for 90 minutes.

Will you stream or skip the Jake Gyllenhaal thriller #TheGuilty on @netflix ? #SIOSI — Decider (@decider) October 1, 2021

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba .

Stream  The Guilty on Netflix

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Featured stories, “the guilty” movie review.

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as 911 dispatcher Joe Bayler trying to help a woman caller in the new Netflix thriller “The Guilty.” The film was released on Oct. 1 and is a remake of a 2018 Danish film of the same name. I have not seen the original, so I cannot make comparisons between it and the remake, but I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed the movie I watched. 

The film follows Joe Bayler, a police detective who has been demoted to being an emergency phone operator. The reason for his demotion also seems to be the reason for his strained relationship with his wife—who he is separated from, and therefore sees their young daughter very little—and his cold, frustrated demeanor. When Joe answers a call from a woman named Emily, played by Riley Keough, who seems to have been abducted, he makes it his mission to get her home safe. At first, this plot may sound a bit predictable and something that has been done before. Well, technically it has, but if you haven’t already seen the original, this is still very exciting to watch. Without spoiling anything, there are twists and turns that take the film beyond a simple rescue mission. I found myself getting extremely nervous for the characters and having emotional reactions to their troubles.

A big reason as to why the film works so well is its lead. Gyllenhaal is amazing at making his performance believable to the audience. His emotions seem very organic and true to the character. Even though Joe can be unlikeable, Gyllenhaal manages to play him in a way that gives him depth. I didn’t necessarily like the person Joe is, but I was rooting for him the entire time. There is real development of the character throughout the movie and it’s very satisfying to watch. As the cinematography and lighting didn’t stand out and was very average by today’s standards, the film benefitted from having such a captivating leading man.

For the first half of the film, I couldn’t help but think about how this movie would be perceived by audiences and critics. The film, at first, seems to be about a troubled cop who just wants to do good. Joe even says, “We’re the police. We’re the protectors.” That had me thinking about recent events in the U.S. which have led to conversations about police officers and the law enforcement system in general. Because of this, I was initially put off by this film telling another story of a cop who wants to do good but just can’t seem to. It didn’t seem appropriate right now. I’m glad I kept paying attention, though, because the plot ended up being so much more profound and relevant than I expected. I encourage people to watch it even if they’re hesitant, because once you get to those twists and turns, everything changes. This isn’t a puff piece about a do-gooder police officer, this is a movie about failing systems and the people crushed under their weight. 

While this film isn’t particularly unique or groundbreaking, I did find it to be impactful and extremely interesting. Gyllenhaal gave this film everything he had and it really paid off. I very much enjoyed getting to see a good thriller that I might have scrolled past when browsing Netflix.

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The Ending Of The Guilty Explained

Over the years, there have been quite a few inventive thrillers with unique locations, from elaborate made-up worlds to films shot mostly in a single location , such as the quirky cult film "Snakes On A Plane" that takes place — you guessed it — on an airplane.

One of the most recent films to take place in one location is the tense thriller "The Guilty," starring Jake Gyllenhaal . In the heart-pounding film, Gyllenhaal plays a Los Angeles police officer named Joe Baylor who's demoted to working as a 911 operator as a temporary punishment for a previous unknown infraction. The majority of calls Baylor receives are not very interesting to him — until he gets a call from a woman who reveals she's been kidnapped.

"The Guilty" is a race against the clock as Baylor tries to find out who the woman is, where she is, and just how much danger she's really in before it's too late. Oh, and the entire film takes place at Baylor's work desk as he speaks on the phone to various personnel in an attempt to track down the victim. While a movie that mainly focuses on a man in front of his computer may not seem all that interesting, Gyllenhaal delivers an electrifying performance, and the film's many twists and turns will leave you scratching your head at the end.

Here's the ending of "The Guilty," explained. 

What really happened to the kidnapped woman?

At the beginning of "The Guilty," Baylor receives a call from a woman (voiced by Riley Keough ) who he almost hangs up on due to her lack of coherent responses. Eventually, he's able to piece together that her name is Emily and she's in the car with a man who abducted her. Throughout most of the film, Baylor tries to pinpoint Emily's location via the information he can see on his computer.

At one point, Baylor calls Emily's home phone number after finding it in the police records, and her daughter Abby (Christiana Montoya) explains what happened — Emily and her estranged husband Henry (Peter Sarsgaard) had a fight, and Henry took Emily away in their car, leaving Abby and her baby brother Oliver home alone. The tension builds as Baylor becomes convinced that Henry is the bad guy in the story, and Baylor does anything he can to save Emily.

In a shocking twist right before Emily attacks Henry (at Baylor's urging), Emily reveals that she cut baby Oliver open to "save" him from snakes that were in his stomach and hurting him. Henry then reveals the full extent of the situation: Henry and Emily agreed to take Emily off of her medication because the price went up — which obviously resulted in a tragedy when her mental health deteriorated, and she hurt Oliver. When Henry "kidnapped" Emily, he was really trying to take her back to the mental health facility she'd previously been to for help.

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website .

Joe Baylor has a secret of his own

While the truth of Emily's situation was surprising enough, it also turns out that Baylor had a huge secret as well. During Baylor's frantic mission of trying to find Emily, he enlists the help of his work colleague Rick (Eli Goree), and also manages to drop a mysterious clue — Baylor urges his friend to get it together for an impending trial, and reminds him to stick to their story. It sounds like Baylor and Rick are plotting to lie under oath, though we don't learn more until the end of the film.

When Emily starts to realize what she'd done, she stands on an overpass and tells Baylor she's going to jump. Baylor becomes panicked as he tries to get through to Emily and talk her out of jumping, and out of nowhere he reveals his own dark secret: He killed a 19-year-old while on the job. He admits that while the teen had hurt someone else and that angered him, he didn't deserve to die. He uses his story to illustrate that while he purposely hurt his victim, in his words, "because I could," Emily hadn't intentionally hurt Oliver.

After succeeding in talking Emily down and getting her in police custody, Baylor has a moment of clarity. He vomits, sobs, and calls Rick, instructing him to tell the truth in court about what he saw on that fateful day. Baylor then calls a news reporter and confesses to killing the teen, and the last scene of the film features a news report that the police officer Joe Baylor has pled guilty to manslaughter.

The Guilty is a thriller with deep messages

Part of what makes "The Guilty" so enthralling, despite its static setting, is the fact that we never quite know what the truth is. The initial mystery about Emily's whereabouts is exciting enough, then we get twist after twist, and our whole sense of reality is challenged — much like Baylor's.

The twists in "The Guilty" also bring up several important questions about real-world issues. Yes, Emily did something completely awful to her baby (thankfully, it's revealed the baby is alive and in the ICU). But in a country where the cost of healthcare is so exorbitant, is she the only one to blame? Surely people should be able to afford to pay for medication to help keep their brain chemistry at a healthy level, and "The Guilty" shows the harsh consequences of unattainable healthcare. 

Additionally, Baylor and Rick are prepared to lie under oath to shield Baylor from being sent to jail, even though they both know he's definitely guilty of murdering someone while on duty. This part of the film sheds a light on the major, ongoing issue of police brutality in the country.

"The Guilty" is available to stream on Netflix, along with other top thrillers .

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At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the first film that really started a buzz was from the relatively under-promoted World Dramatic Competition, Gustav Möller ’s “The Guilty,” now finally opening in limited release. It’s easy to see why so many critics and viewers have taken to this laser-focused study of a man whose prejudices and assumptions enhance a tense day on the job. With its single setting and real-time story, “The Guilty” is a brilliant genre exercise, a cinematic study in tension, sound design, and how to make a thrilling movie with a limited tool box. The film’s own restrictions actually amplify the tension, forcing us into the confined space of its protagonist.

The opening moments of “The Guilty” might feel like mere wheel-spinning until the “real story” kicks in but they’re essential to why the film really works. In them, we meet Asger Holm (Jacob Cedergren) a Danish police officer embroiled in a bit of a controversy, and so stuck at an Emergency Services (their version of 911) call center until it blows over. We get snippets of conversation about a testimony tomorrow and learn that he no longer lives with his significant other, but we don’t know the details—these are just elements that add to the fabric of tension, and reveal that Asger is under a lot of stress.

Asger is also kind of a jerk. In his role as the provider of necessary, often life-saving services, he can be judgmental and abrasive. A few calls early in the film reveal this character trait as he scolds one caller for taking drugs and allows another who has been mugged by a prostitute to stew in his bad decision before sending help. The idea that Asger isn’t as free from assumptions about the people who call him as he should be sets him up as a flawed character. And so when he gets a call that will change his life, we know that he’s already imperfect—and that could impact how the night unfolds.

The call comes from a woman, who Asger identifies through his call system as Iben. She sounds like she’s in trouble but she’s not making a lot of sense. We soon learn, with Asger, that she can’t exactly say what’s wrong but she alludes to a very bad situation, and our protagonist soon gets sucked into the nightmare she’s experiencing. Well, he gets sucked into his interpretation of what she’s experiencing. “The Guilty” is a complex examination of how commonly we make assumptions about other people—how easily we can take a limited amount of information and fill in the gaps in a way that’s not always right. Just as he blames the drug taker for making a bad decision without knowing anything about what led up to that decision, he jumps to conclusions with Iben that prove to be his downfall.

In a sense, all of us make variations on the mistakes that Asger makes in this film, only with less terrifying results (I hope). Think about how often we use a tweet or a text in ways to read the mind of the person sending it. One of the masterstrokes of “The Guilty” is how identifiable Asger feels. Even though he’s not exactly likable, we want him to pull out of the tailspin he’s in on this night, and “The Guilty” gains another level of complexity when Asger realizes that this night is allowing our hero to see how he got here—the aforementioned controversy—in a whole new light.

“The Guilty” is a tight, excellent piece of work that will likely be seen by way too few and forgotten in the year-end conversation. Denmark has submitted it for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, a category that can often be hard to predict but typically goes with more recognizable auteurs or movies dense with internationally resonant social messages. It’s been a phenomenal year for this category with films like “ Roma ,” “Shoplifters,” and “Burning” almost certain to pop up. Those Cannes and TIFF hits deserve their acclaim, but don’t forget about the film from Sundance.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Retired pro wrestler who ran twice for Congress pleads not guilty in Las Vegas murder case

Daniel Rodimer, second right, leaves court with his attorneys David Chesnoff, left, and Richard Schonfeld after his arraignment at the Regional Justice Center in Las Vegas, Wednesday, May 8, 2024. Rodimer, a retired professional wrestler and former congressional candidate in Nevada and Texas has pleaded not guilty to a murder charge in the death of a man last year at a Las Vegas Strip hotel. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP)

Daniel Rodimer, right, appears in court with his attorneys David Chesnoff, left, and Richard Schonfeld during his arraignment at the Regional Justice Center in Las Vegas, Wednesday, May 8, 2024. Rodimer, a retired professional wrestler and former congressional candidate, was indicted on a murder charge in the death of a man during a party at a Las Vegas Strip hotel. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP)

Daniel Rodimer is seen in court during his arraignment at the Regional Justice Center in Las Vegas, Wednesday, May 8, 2024. Rodimer, a retired professional wrestler and former congressional candidate in Nevada and Texas pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a murder charge in the death of an Idaho man last year at a Las Vegas Strip hotel. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP)

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LAS VEGAS (AP) — A retired professional wrestler and former congressional candidate in Nevada and Texas pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a murder charge in the death of a man last year at a Las Vegas Strip hotel.

Daniel Rodimer, 45, appeared in court for a brief arraignment. His attorneys, Richard Schonfeld and David Chesnoff, told a state court judge they intend to file documents challenging Rodimer’s indictment in the Halloween party death of Christopher Tapp of Idaho Falls, Idaho.

Outside court, Chesnoff told reporters that Rodimer “vigorously denies any responsibility for the allegations.”

Rodimer lives in Texas. He lost Republican bids for Congress in Nevada in 2020 and in Texas in 2021 . He surrendered to Las Vegas police for his arrest March 6 and remains free on a $200,000 bail.

A grand jury was told that Tapp was fatally injured when he hit his head on a table after Rodimer attacked him during a dispute about drug use in the presence of Rodimer’s stepdaughter at the party at the Resorts World Las Vegas resort. Tapp died several days later.

Tapp, 47, was the recipient in 2022 of an $11.7 million settlement in a lawsuit stemming from his a wrongful conviction in Idaho in a 1996 killing. He had spent more than 20 years in prison.

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Tom brady takes issue with jeff ross’ joke about robert kraft during netflix roast: “don’t say that s*** again”.

The seven-time Super Bowl champion approached Ross to express his opinion about a joke focused on the Patriots owner's 2019 scandal.

By Kimberly Nordyke

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Tom Brady took the jokes in stride at his roast — well, most of them.

Amid jabs about Gisele Bündchen, deflategate and his good looks Sunday night, Brady bristled at one in particular, aimed at the Patriots’ 82-year-old owner, Robert Kraft.

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Brady then approached Ross, who’d blown a kiss Kraft’s way, and said in his ear: “Don’t say that shit again.” Ross replied, “OK, OK. He’s having fun, look at him. I love what you do for the Jews, Robert Kraft. You’re incredible.”

The joke was a reference to a 2019 incident in which Kraft was charged with soliciting prostitution after an investigation into massage parlors in Florida. Police said they had recorded Kraft paying for sex acts. He pleaded not guilty, and a federal judge later ordered that the recordings be destroyed after it was found they were filmed unlawfully. The case was dismissed later that year.

The Greatest Roast of All Time: Tom Brady, which was part of the Netflix Is a Joke Fest, was streamed live, which Netflix touted as the first-ever roast to be telecast live, unedited. The festivities were held at L.A.‘s Kia Forum in Inglewood.

Among the other boldface names in attendance were Ben Affleck, Will Ferrell, Kim Kardashian, Jim Gaffigan, Amanda Kloots, Richard Kind, Chelsea Handler and Dane Cook, along with NFL pros Peyton Manning, Rob Gronkowski, Randy Moss, Rodney Harrison, Julian Edelman and Matt Light. Kevin Hart served as host of the night.

The roast was executive produced by Brady, Casey Patterson, Ross, Hart and Jeff Clanagan for Hartbeat.

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