The Guilty, 2018.
Directed by Gustav Möller.
Starring Jakob Cedergren, Jessica Dinnage, and Johan Olsen.
SYNOPSIS:
A police officer assigned alarm dispatch duty enters a race against time when he answers an emergency call from a kidnapped woman.
The Danish entry into the upcoming race for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar is a tight, unpretentious low-budget thriller which makes for a tantalising filmmaking debut for writer-director Gustav Möller.
Police officer Asger Holm (Jakob Cedergren) is working his last shift at an emergency dispatch centre before he’s due to return to his regular cop beat pending the outcome of a court hearing. However, the exasperated Asger finds himself forced to act when one of his callers indicates she’s been kidnapped. With time running out, he desperately attempts to track down her location and get the authorities on the scene, all while ensuring her kidnapper doesn’t figure out who she’s talking to.
While that core premise might sound rather familiar, The Guilty actually provides a fairly inventive spin on the “one last job” action movie; for starters, Asger has one day left until he can return to his normal job, not retirement. His goal isn’t to make it through the day so he can spend his life fishing at a lake house, he just wants to grind through a final shift before getting back out on the street.
More obviously divergent from typical race-against-time kidnap thrillers is the reined-in style; the entire movie takes place inside the dispatch office, creating a boxed-in feel and also requiring Möller to get creative in order to sustain interest.
In addition to cinematography which fixates on the confined nature of the work and also Asger’s expressive face, the phone calls themselves ask the viewer to create imagery in their own mind, and in one instance, even requiring them to imagine a breakneck car chase.
It’s smart filmmaking that makes fantastic use of the limited resources available, though the film’s real secret weapon is star Cedergren, who carries literally the entire movie, with almost every shot of the film focused on his visage. His Asger is irascible and impatient at times, but also understandably so, especially once the full nature of his demotion to phone jockey is explained. Cedergren renders a rich portrait of a complex man forced to re-evaluate himself and act accordingly, and ensures the film survives through a few less-convincing scripted moments.
Though Möller’s film mostly lands on the right side of subdued, it does suffer from feeling a tad contrived in places; you might need to jump through a few hoops to accept certain aspects of the character logic, yet some initially puzzling aspects are at least clarified before film’s end.
The main issue comes with a mid-film revelation that’s so intensely predictable you might suspect you’re being set-up for a double-twist, but you’re not. Some dramatic licence was probably required to sustain suspense with such a stripped-down execution, but still, it’s a facile moment in a film that otherwise makes a lot of great choices. That it effectively defines the rest of the narrative through-line is a tad unfortunate.
For the most part, though, The Guilty is a thoroughly engaging, low-fi genre exercise that pools its limited resources together with real panache. A predictable yet sinewy single-location thriller elevated by Jakob Cedergren’s cracking performance.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Shaun Munro – Follow me on Twitter for more film rambling.
