The Guilty (English version)

Directed by : Antoine Fuqua

Broken people save broken people.


Spoilers ahead... 


About a demoted police officer Joe Baylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) assigned to a call dispatch desk who gets an emergency call from a kidnapped woman. 

Set in Los Angeles and the backdrop of California wildfires making the office proceedings more lively where basically the entire story takes place with us not shown the faces on the other side of the call.

Its a very edge of the seat thriller, because like Joe you do believe that the kidnapped woman is in trouble but at same time you are also wondering a twist may come yet its pretty tough to guess what we do get in the final act. 

I like the added touch of Joe trying to interact with his wife on phone regarding saying good night to his daughter and then his phone lock having her daughter's picture while he talks to the kidnapped woman or that woman's girl later on adds more to the emotional layer. 

Oddly, what made the film work less for me was Jake Gyllenhaal. He always is a reason to watch movies but here he played this character with over expressive anger. 

The twist works perfectly for me, and so did the other actors involved in the phone conversations. The court hearing looming over Joe next day is also well inserted in to add more drama.

The Guilty is a good watch, probably you would like it more than me if you don't mind the way Jake plays this role. 

My Rating : 5.5/10


The Guilty (Danish version)

Directed by : Gustav Moller

He kept crying because he had snakes in his stomach. I just took them out. 


The demoted police officer here is Asger Holm (Jakob Cedergren) and rest of the plot or even the conversations are same as the English version. This is the original movie though. 

The setting here is very minimal, so much so that there's hardly much happening at the office workplace until ofcourse the kidnapped woman's call arrives. There's no mention of Asger's wife or children which does slightly effect the scene where Asger talks to the kidnapped women's girl.

Its Jakob Cedergren who makes this a better watch, he plays the character with same amount of anger inside but always restraining it. You could rather see it in his eyes way he emotes whenever he feels a strong emotion. A reason why he admitting his Guilt regarding the court hearing case next day work a lot with all the office staff around listening in shock, whereas in English version, Jake didn't admit to it in front of them all. 

This one also has a much darker ending because of a certain person not able to escape death. The fact that they never show any of those horrofic visuals makes it even better as you just can't help but think about it when it happened. 

Despite the less chaos or a backdrop setting, there's lot more to enjoy in this original version of The Guilty. 

My Rating : 7/10