REVIEW: The Guilty is one man, one phone, one caller, and one helluva thriller
This riveting Danish thriller is one man, one phone, one caller, and one helluva thriller. It just won’t hang up … and it doesn’t hold back, writes Leigh Paatsch.
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A consummately riveting Danish thriller, The Guilty puts you on hold, then puts you in a hold. It won’t be letting go until its short, sharp and nerve-shredding 80 minutes are up.
Remember that gripping movie Locke from a few years ago, which was nothing but Tom Hardy making a whole lot of calls on his car phone?
Well, this one reduces and refines the variables even further, and the tension level spike even higher.
All you will see in The Guilty is a man, a headset, and on occasion, a computer monitor.
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All you will hear is a sequence of phone calls both taken and made by Constable Asger Holm (Jakob Cedergren), a street cop demoted to working the triple-0 line in a Copenhagen crisis response centre.
There is a woman being held against her will in a white transit van. It is speeding through the rainy night in an outer suburb, eluding Highway Patrol cars at every turn.
At the wheel is her estranged husband. At home, alone, are her two children.
If Asger reads the situation right, everyone just might make it through the night unscathed.
If he gets it wrong, a terrifying tragedy could unfold.
Intriguingly, the more that The Guilty elects to take off the storytelling table, the more powerful it becomes.
While Cedergren’s anchoring performance is crucial to the film’s success, so too is the superb sound design that makes the contents of every conversation matter to the very last word.
Variations in mobile phone reception, unknown voices in the background and the sound of that van grinding through its gears all combine to chill viewers to the bone.
A deceptively devastating viewing (and listening) experience.
SEE IT IN MELBOURNE: The Guilty is now showing at the Cinema Nova, Carlton.
SEE IT IN SYDNEY: The Guilty is now showing at the Dendy Newtown.
SEE IT IN BRISBANE: The Guilty is now showing at the New Farm Cinemas.
THE GUILTY (M)
Rating: Four stars (out of 5)
Director: Gustav Moller (feature debut)
Starring: Jakob Cedergren.
Just one call, but so much on the line