The Guilty

Directed by Antoine Fuqua, The Guilty follows 911 operator Joe Bayler (Jake Gyllenhaal) as he frantically attempts to save the life of a woman (Riley Keough’s Emily) who claims to have been abducted by her violent ex (Peter Sarsgaard’s Henry). Filmmaker Fuqua, armed with Nic Pizzolatto’s screenplay, delivers a mostly engaging yet far-from-flawless thriller that benefits substantially from Gyllenhaal’s striking, commanding work as the complex central character, and it’s clear, certainly, that many of the picture’s faults become relatively easy to overlook in the face of Gyllenhaal’s predictably first-class efforts – with the actor receiving plenty of top-notch support from such off-screen periphery players as Ethan Hawke, Riley Keough, and Peter Sarsgaard. And although the movie boasts plenty of stirring, suspenseful interludes, The Guilty suffers from a decidedly erratic midsection that rarely feels as taut or consistently tense as Fuqua has presumably intended – with the far-from-streamlined atmosphere dulling, to a slight degree, the impact of the white-knuckle climax. The end result is a solid piece of work that ultimately does fall right in line with its equally-effective Dutch predecessor, with the film owing much of its success, if not the majority of it, to Gyllenhaal’s perpetually magnetic performance.

*** out of ****