Netflix Movie Review: The Guilty (2021)

Arriving 10/1 on Netflix

If you haven’t seen “The Guilty,” you should see “The Guilty.” Let me try this again. If you’ve seen “The Guilty,” you might like “The Guilty.” No, that’s still not quite right. It might help if I tell you that there are two versions of “The Guilty.” There’s the original 2018 Danish film from director Gustav Möller, which was one of the year’s very best movies, and then there’s the new American remake directed by Antoine Fuqua, which debuted last week in theatres in selected cities and will arrive on Netflix on October 1.

Knowing this, I'm sure you can probably guess which of the two pictures I prefer because that's usually the way it goes with remakes of foreign films that frequently lose something vital in the English translation (just like all too often, the book is better than the movie). Of course, there are definite exceptions to this, but in the case of “The Guilty,” it isn't enough just to say that, yes, as predicted, the original version of the film is far superior to the American remake.

Because as a work, it is utterly dependent upon a few major plot revelations that slowly and methodically unfurl over the course of its very stressful roughly ninety-minute running time, since Fuqua's “The Guilty” adheres very closely to Möller's own film, the version you see first might just dictate which one you prefer. 

Set over the course of a very long night in a 911 emergency call center in Los Angeles, as Fuqua's film opens, we meet a police officer who has been temporarily reassigned during an investigation into some sort of conduct violation that we learn more about later on.

In the midst of L.A.'s fire season where the calls are coming in hot and the air is so smoky and polluted that it's exacerbating his asthma something fierce, Jake Gyllenhaal's Joe answers incoming distress calls with the same degree of breathless disdain, cynicism, and entitlement with which he used to patrol the city's streets. Whether it's people requesting help because they took too much speed or were robbed by a hooker (both incidents play out exactly as in the original), Joe counts down the minutes until his hearing the next day, after which he hopes to get off the phones and go back on the beat. However, suddenly, a call comes in that does the unthinkable; it makes Joe not only care but also get very involved.

A woman's (Riley Keough) voice comes in on the line speaking to Joe as though he were her child. But before he disconnects from what he assumes is a wrong number, something in the timbre of her voice stops him. Shaky, tear-filled, and in a state of panic she's trying to hide, when he hears a man (Peter Sarsgaard) ask her who she's talking to, Joe starts piecing together the narrative that she's been abducted by her husband by asking the woman yes or no questions only.

Barely able to sit still in his chair – his jittery hand forever fondling his inhaler because he knows it's only a matter of time before he runs out of breath once again – he becomes a cop again before our eyes. Demanding help from the California Highway Patrol and others who are inundated by fire, crises, and crime calls of their own, Joe tries to route squads to pull over a white van traveling eastbound on the I-10 and also send cars to her home to check on these children that she keeps talking about.

Getting even more frantic when they get disconnected and she doesn't answer the phone, he calls her home to talk to her young daughter who helps Joe fill in a few more blanks. Rather than be the first one out the door from his final shift, he abruptly refuses to leave until he sees this case through to the end. Restrained by legal red tape, jurisdictional issues, and bureaucracy, Joe eventually goes into an isolated room, closes the blinds, and devotes the rest of the film's running time to trying to bring Keough's Emily Lighton home safely.

That old macho rage at a forefront – for reasons both good and bad – he makes a request to his loyal sergeant (voiced by Ethan Hawke) to go and kick some doors in when the more he hears and uncovers about Emily, the more alarmed he becomes. But is he really listening or is he working out his own personal issues with regret as a father in the midst of marital strife? Is he fighting to save Emily or himself?

Both versions of “The Guilty” serve as a reminder that whenever one interacts with emergency services in the form of police, fire, or paramedics, it's on one of the worst days of our lives. Communication, as the works reveal, is at the forefront of our experience, and limits are placed on what gets conveyed, understood, the authority figure's abilities to help (read: not hurt), and whatever they're going through on their own as well.

Where the two works differ greatly is in terms of their approach. Subtle, whittled down, and respectful enough of the audience's intelligence not to give us a lot of overt messages, excuses, spell everything out, or punctuate every new revelation with an intrusive score, Möller's “The Guilty” is masterful in the way it slowly builds to its unbearably tense conclusion. 

In stark contrast, anyone who's seen a film by Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day,” “Southpaw,” “Olympus Has Fallen,” etc.) knows that subtlety is not his strong suit. The new "Guilty" is utterly overstuffed, both with the baggage of Joe and the gravity of America in the present moment. Filled with symbolism, from the fires raging outside and internally in Joe to that damn inhaler, and punctuated with cacophonous sound to drive his points home via a score that “tells” you what and how to feel, "The Guilty" is a lot to absorb without a headache. Also, it's loaded with explanations for behavior that in some ways augment the film by commenting on the problems faced in our country and in others, just play like speechifying sound bites.

Whereas the original film (which Gyllenhaal first saw at Sundance in 2018 and knew immediately he wanted to remake) was content to let the battles within his dynamic main character come to the forefront as needed and often in his micro-expressions or through actor Jakob Cedergren's eyes, the new version makes our lead much more vocal, demonstrative, and unhinged. One of the strongest American actors of his generation, Gyllenhaal is more than up to the task to bring humanity to what is largely a one-man show, save for the remarkable contributions by members of its vocal cast, including Keough, Sarsgaard, Hawke, Paul Dano, and others.

But while the film goes big when it should go little, its tendency to push to the extreme lessens as it continues, when Fuqua, his cinematographer, and editor pull back slightly, and Gyllenhaal dials the bravado down several notches. As someone who grew up around cops, let me be the first to say that they most definitely have a Cop Voice, Cop Manner, and Cop Behavior. And just like when someone gets out of the military, it takes some time for them to leave that behind and just assimilate with the rest of us, Fuqua – who's made many movies dealing with this very thing as both director and producer – understands this well. Gyllenhaal's Joe learns to modulate his voice and behavior the longer he's on the phone with Emily and the film is better for it.

Still, though, the first chunk of his “Guilty,” which was written by “True Detective”'s Nic Pizzolatto (though by their own admission somewhat rewritten by Fuqua and Gyllenhaal), plays like a dropped character and subplot that was edited out of “Training Day.” Far more of an extreme contrast than we truly need as Joe evolves over the course of the movie, as I watched this one, I kept thinking of not only the original Danish production but also Steven Knight's brilliant UK movie “Locke,” from 2013 as well.

Truly a one-man show in terms of actors on the screen, in Knight's film, we see Tom Hardy's character answer a phone call on a drive home that changes everything for him. Something as simple as which direction he's going to go and what he's going to do next has life-altering stakes, and just like in both versions of “The Guilty,” made a few years later, the film's drama comes from his interactions with others whose voices we hear on the other end of his various calls.

Shot in real-time as Hardy made the same drive each night and went through the same emotional drama only a handful of times as if it were a play, both versions of “The Guilty,” were shot similarly. Yet instead of just letting it play out real-time over 90 minutes with Hardy in a car and the cameras ready to go the whole time, both “Guilty” productions were completed in shoots ranging from 11 (Fuqua) to 13 (Möller) days. But by focusing less on manufacturing drama and more on letting it play out on its own, both “Locke” and the original version of “The Guilty” work so much better with far less artifice than the 2021 rendition of the latter.

In the end, of course, Fuqua's film might still be worth watching if you liked Möller's original “Guilty" and are curious what the new incarnation might look like Americanized, with all of these gifted actors, and with the volume turned way, way up. But if you've never pressed play on the original, I'd highly recommend seeing both "Locke" and “The Guilty” before you see “The Guilty,” to see how to tell the story of a man on a phone at a crossroads in his life right.

Text ©2021, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: Breakdown (1997)

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“The Lady Vanishes” is not just an early Hitchcock movie that writer-director Jonathan Mostow vividly remembers seeing as a kid, it’s also the premise of his big 1997 Hollywood breakout hit “Breakdown.” As tautly wound as a garrote and nearly as treacherous, shortly into the film, after a couple's brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee breaks down in the middle of the desert, Amy (Kathleen Quinlan) leaves her husband (Kurt Russell) with the car and accepts a lift into town with a seemingly friendly trucker (J.T. Walsh) before she vanishes like the sun setting in the west. Determined to get her back, even after a cop helps him confront trucker Red Barr (Walsh) who pretends he’s never seen Jeff (Russell) before in his life, our “everyman” knows he must do everything in his power to track his wife down himself.

An amazingly compact, efficient, and rivetingly effective thriller, from the moment that Katheleen Quinlan disappears, the action in “Breakdown” just goes-goes-goes Beat Generation style, barreling like a semi going down a very steep hill, yet never out-of-control. Clocking in at roughly ninety minutes, Mostow’s film plays like a gritty yet glossy entry into the universally relatable Ordinary Person in Extraordinary Peril subgenre of thriller that we saw so much of in the 1970s in everything from “Duel” to “Deliverance.”

Keeping some of its roots as a project developed based upon the work of Stephen King (like his short story “Trucks,” which the film’s producers had already made into “Maximum Overdrive” years earlier), after King backed out and wouldn’t lend his name to the picture, Mostow went back to his original Hitchcockian inspiration to deliver a frighteningly intense gaslit neo-action-noir. 

Missing the humor of “The Lady Vanishes,” or the investigation of faux female hysteria evident in both that picture as well as “Gaslight,” “So Long at the Fair,” and others, “Breakdown” is a no-holds-barred, pared-down, male-centric, intentionally “redneck” infused work of southwestern nastiness. And it's this last characteristic that Mostow emphasizes by making Jeff and Amy Taylor from Boston, as the couple moves west to San Diego in search of a better life. Like the settlers who ventured that direction in old western films or on the Oregon Trail in real life, in "Breakdown," Walsh and others make it clear that as outsiders, if they can't "hang," then they don't belong.

At its core, a tale of the women in this country (or really any country) who are here one minute but seemingly dissolve just like molecules and float away into the wind the next, “Breakdown” serves this up to us on a platter of oil, grease, and dirt gleaned from lonely back roads of America, until, filtered in futile rage, it becomes a vengeful Man on a Mission movie. Bolstered and made palatable by one of the most likable movie stars of his time, although Russell’s Jeff Taylor is a far cry from his iconic Snake Plissken in John Carpenter’s “Escape from New York” (or “Escape from L.A.,” which he made just before this), my personal favorite era and mode in the career of Kurt Russell is this one.

Catching up with him at a time where he was frequently cast as an everyman who suddenly finds himself in the middle of a ‘90s action movie with (likely) questionable politics, as epitomized by films like “Unlawful Entry,” “Executive Decision,” and “Breakdown,” back then, it was great to finally see him play something closer to the man his colleagues say he is in real life. And while all three of those films still pack a punch and pull you right in to get similarly bruised, battered, and blood pressure-shot alongside our lead, it’s “Breakdown” that feels perhaps the most timeless and/or maybe the least ‘90s of this particular ‘90s trio.

For as much as it was a film of its time (and it was indeed a movie that opened at number one at the box office), it still feels vintage in the best way. Not just a picture with more in common with those made a decade or two before it like “Duel" or “Road Games," "Breakdown" also deftly deals in questions of paranoia that fueled so many of the classic gaslight noirs, including the Hitchcockian comedy of manners and errors, “The Lady Vanishes.”

Though largely overlooked in conversations about the filmmaker’s most famous works, it’s safe to call “Vanishes” the most significant transportation-based mystery of its time, after Agatha Christie’s novel “Murder on the Orient Express,” which was written four years before Hitch’s film but adapted for the screen forty years later in 1974, right around the time “Duel” and “Deliverance” trafficked in similar thematic terrain.

Although some may say that everything old is new again (and what else is new), there’s this question of taking a wrong turn, possibly disappearing, and/or being thrust into a situation like this - especially when you’re vulnerable on the road, on the train, on the river, or on vacation - that makes these films so urgently gripping. At the same time, admittedly, some of the films cited have a convoluted solution, and sure enough, as “Breakdown” devolves into a work of near horror closer to its conclusion, it sacrifices some of its relatable ingenuity and mystery in order to give us a true showdown of bravura and vengeance and pushes our suspension of disbelief close to its breaking point.

But it’s still such a well-written, crackerjack, nerve-jangling, heart in your throat affair that’s anchored by the casting of “every day” Kurt that we just can’t help holding on and staying with it (and him) until the very end. Produced by Dino and Martha De Laurentiis, and filled with practical effects, real trucks, and Russell doing his own stunts - including driving a Jeep downhill and going with it right into the water - “Breakdown” is a throwback to the days before CGI dominated everything.

 

Famously, however, in his largely glowing review of the film from 1997, “Chicago Sun-Times” critic Roger Ebert pointed out that he felt that the ending of “Breakdown” swung too far into old testament “eye for an eye” territory than he felt it needed to as we see our leads battle it out. Yet although I can understand that perspective, at the same time, the movie’s western desert setting has the mythos of that genre built right into the landscape so I think that, although it’s undeniably an over-the-top over-kill, it still gives viewers a very meta form of catharsis in at least seeing a female character assert herself in this environment where they’re typically forgotten and/or used as cattle or currency.

(Note: I’ll be intentionally vague here to avoid concrete spoilers but you’ve been warned.)

To this end, one fascinating new revelation that's revealed in one of the terrific bonus features available in Paramount’s spotless new Blu-ray is that this final bit of comeuppance was given to this cast member by Kurt Russell in an act of solidarity. Tired of seeing women only play the victim, after she requested one victorious moment where she could turn the tables on her captor without being “forced” to do so in an act of self-defense, Russell stepped in and offered her the film’s final bit of frontier justice that he was supposed to dole out himself. And while, of course, it’s ridiculous as noted, seen in this light and not only in an era of Me Too but also after decades of movies of this type where women are usually gaslit, abducted, or killed, I must say I’m all for it.

An unrelenting thriller where the minutes fly by as quickly as Quinlan’s lady vanishes from Russell’s eye line, while as a film geek, it’s fun to dissect which legendary films of the past might’ve inspired Mostow’s “Breakdown,” on a Saturday night, it’s far more entertaining to first buckle into that newly vacant shotgun seat of that Jeep Grand Cherokee with Russell at the wheel and just go along for the ride.

Text ©2021, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Review: I'm Your Man (2021)

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A tall, kind, supportive, handsome, dark-haired man with a British accent who looks at the woman that he's with with puppy dog levels of adoration, if Tom (Dan Stevens) seems like the perfect man, that's because he is…for the most part. Unfortunately, however, what he isn't is a man.

A humanoid robot designed to be one hundred percent compatible with Alma (Maren Eggert), a Pergamon Museum academic who has agreed to evaluate Tom for a three week period in order to fund and further her own research into ancient cuneiform writing, although their prospective relationship seems like a joke to the deeply uncomfortable Alma, Tom takes his romantic mission deadly seriously.

From being startled when she gives him his own bedroom instead of sharing a bed with him to being hurt when she's too busy to indulge in a romantic brunch he whipped up for her the next morning, just like we all learn and adapt to our own partners over the years, Tom does as well. Not allowed to tell others that he's a robot, an embarrassed Alma deposits him in a cafe by her work the next day and, just like the metaphorical puppy dog he resembles following his “master” around, Tom happily stands outside in the rain once the business closes and waits for her to return.



Humanistic and true, despite the fact that it deals in the artificiality of technology, acclaimed actress turned director Maria Schrader's German film “I'm Your Man” – which she co-wrote with Jan Schomburg, based on a short story by Emma Braslavsky – begins as a gentle comedy of manners and errors. But, aided immensely by the chemistry of our leads and the fact that the delightful Stevens never once slips and plays Tom with a wink instead of absolutely straight, the film soon modulates into a melancholic, timely meditation of the importance of human affection and connection and a study of loneliness in contemporary society.

Embodied extraordinarily well by Eggert (in a difficult balance of vulnerability and strength throughout), the more we learn about Alma, including the source of her pain and the reason why she's put up so many walls, the more we understand how hard it is for her to knock them down for someone – anyone – let alone a robot programmed to be her dream beau.

Choosing, as we all do, which people we're willing to let into our weird little worlds, Alma is a woman who's been burned in the past. Furthermore, the screenwriters' decision for the film's tech firm to bring to life a mate who, through no fault of “his” own, calls up the mental picture of someone Alma loved when her life was much simpler and everything was in front of her both professionally and personally, makes “I'm Your Man” resonate on a deeper, more universal level than one would assume going in.

While on the lighter side of philosophical, it nonetheless raises valid questions about how relationships build or disintegrate over time as our needs change and how we all walk around with different levels of trauma. Yet Schrader's movie has far less in common with other films about romantic robot surrogates like Steven Spielberg's Kubrickian “A.I. Artificial Intelligence,” than it does with either mythology or George Bernard Shaw's “Pygmalion” (and its musical counterpart “My Fair Lady”).

A critical hit overseas, especially in its native Germany where lead actress Maren Eggert won the first-ever gender-neutral Silver Bear acting prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, although the ending of “I'm Your Man” comes off as abrupt and a bit tonally dissonant with respect to the rest of the film's harmony, it's still a wholly impressive foreign import overall.

Befitting of the phrase “and now for something completely different,” while the tendency would be in America to play the whole thing for laughs, there's something far more refreshing and earnest about Schrader's approach. Following Tom's lead, as you view “I'm Your Man,” it gazes right back at you with interest, hoping that – if you look closely enough – you'll catch not only a flicker of recognition but your whole self reflected back at you as you watch.


Text ©2021, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.