Netflix’s The Guilty review: Jake Gyllenhaal has nowhere to hide

Everything in Netflix’s new film, The Guilty, hinges on Jake Gyllenhaal’s raging performance. He’s not just in every scene, he is every scene.

The Guilty is all-in on Jake Gyllenhaal – and you have to be too because there is nowhere else to turn.

Director Antoine Fuqua’s (Training Day) latest film features Gyllenhaal as a benched cop forced into a desk job at a Los Angeles dispatch call centre. He is in every scene, and he is every scene.

With the exception of a couple of very small roles – some colleagues he minimally interacts with – Gyllenhaal is the only on-screen character in a 90-minute movie. So, if you’re not on the Gyllenhaal train, hop off now.

As Joe Baylor, Gyllenhaal is a study in rage, his temples pulsing, his contempt dripping out of every pore. It’s frightening and familiar.

Jake Gyllenhaal has no where to hide. Picture: Glen Wilson/Netflix

Joe is awaiting trial for something that is only revealed in the film’s final act, but it hangs around him like a noose. He’s dismissive of the callers who’ve dialled into 9-1-1, asking for help – he tells one bike crash victim to call an Uber and don’t cycle drunk.

Another caller has been robbed by a sex worker – and Joe can’t summon either compassion or urgency.

But then he takes a call from a woman named Emily, whose small, trembling voice eventually gives away that she’s been abducted.

Emily’s predicament gives Joe purpose, a mission into which he can try and reclaim some semblance of control in a world that’s spiralling. But Los Angeles is surrounded by smoke and wildfire, and resources are stretched.

The Guilty is an effective, suspenseful thriller, grounded in a central mystery that invites the viewer to come along for the solve, as Joe, from behind his desk, puts together each piece like an escape room puzzle.

Famous, unseen voices ring out from over the line with the likes of Ethan Hawke, Peter Sarsgaard, Riley Keough and Paul Dano as callers but this whole movie belongs to Gyllenhaal’s intense, escalating performance.

The Guilty is on Netflix now. Picture: Glen Wilson/Netflix

Its tension comes from exploiting its claustrophobic structure, tethered as we are to Gyllenhaal’s coiled, agitated Joe. But it lacks a depth that would make the character more connected. Rather, he’s mostly a vessel to solve a mystery.

The suspense works on a similar level to Colin Farrell in Phone Booth and Ryan Reynolds in Buried, two other films in which an isolated character has to navigate a near-impossible situation with the voices on the other end of a phone, but Fuqua is able to be visually a tad more varied. He has, at least, three rooms to work with.

Try as Gyllenhaal, Fuqua and screenwriter Nic Pizzolatto (True Detective) might in positioning The Guilty as an immersive exploration of rage, the film works far better as a stock standard thriller.

It does just enough to keep you engaged but nothing more.

Rating: 3/5

The Guilty is streaming now on Netflix

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Originally published as Netflix’s The Guilty review: Jake Gyllenhaal has nowhere to hide