Review | Netflix movie review: The Guilty – Jake Gyllenhaal plays a police dispatch operator in Antoine Fuqua’s claustrophobic single-location thriller

In a remake of Gustav Möller’s 2018 Danish thriller, the cameras follow Gyllenhaal’s increasingly strung out police dispatch officer over the course of a night

A star-studded voice cast that includes Peter Sarsgaard, Ethan Hawke and Paul Dano adds to this tautly wound, visually inventive character study

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Jake Gyllenhaal stars as a disgraced police officer desperately trying to do the right thing in The Guilty, directed by Antoine Fuqua. Photo: Glen Wilson/Netflix

Published: 2:45pm, 4 Oct 2021Updated: 3:19pm, 4 Oct 2021

3/5 stars

A police dispatch operator receives a distress call from an abducted young woman in The Guilty, Antoine Fuqua’s claustrophobic single-location remake of Gustav Möller’s celebrated 2018 Danish thriller of the same title.

Jake Gyllenhaal stars and produces as a disgraced police officer, forced to work the phones as he awaits trial over a wrongful shooting, opposite a star-studded voice cast that includes Riley Keough, Peter Sarsgaard, Ethan Hawke and Paul Dano.

Gyllenhaal himself acquired the remake rights for The Guilty, which was shot by Fuqua (Southpaw) in 11 days from a script by True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto.

A tautly wound and visually inventive character study, The Guilty arrives as a perfectly packaged Covid-19-era project. Filmed in one location in close to real time, we follow the increasingly strung out Joe Baylor (Gyllenhaal) over the course of a single night.

The Academy Award nominee and seasoned actor delivers a captivating performance that puts Baylor and the audience through the emotional wringer.