Our movie today is a Netflix crime drama, released at the end of September 2021. Jake Gyllenhall plays our lead, Los Angeles Police Detective Joe Baylor who has been reassigned as a 911 operator. Why was he reassigned? We are given bits and pieces that something happened eight months ago, and he is facing a trial that begins the next day.
The movie spans one evening shift of Joe answering 911 calls, and I must tell you someone needs to call 911 for Joe because he is a mess. He’s argumentative to callers looking for assistance, constantly sucking on his inhaler, and is calling his soon to be ex-wife at 2am to speak to his young daughter. Hello, it’s 2am!
He also is receiving calls from a reporter who wants to “present his side of the story” relating to the trial. I’ve pretty much decided that whatever he is accused of, he’s guilty. His behavior screams of someone who is living a lie and hanging on by a thread.
Soon Joe receives a 911 call from a woman named Emily, who is distraught and driving on a highway. Thru a series of questions, Joe deduces she is being abducted by a man in a van. Emily is crying that her young daughter is home alone and she just needs to go home to her. The phone call is abruptly disconnected by the man in the van.
Thus begins the premise of our movie, an abducted woman, taken by an unknown man in a white van on a CA highway surrounded by the CA wildfires. Joe is on it, and he is no longer just a 911 operator. He transforms himself into this woman’s would be savior. It’s almost as if finding and saving this woman will in his mind give him redemption for whatever the criminal case is against him.
This is not a long movie, at just 91 minutes, but it was a LONG 91 minutes. At one point, I had to check how much time was left, and we were only 54 minutes in.
It gets repetitive, Joe calls Emily and gets voice mail, or he calls her “abductor” and gets his voice mail or hung up on. Joe STOP calling them and change tactics, use your police training and stop running on misplaced emotions.
In the end, Joe’s assumptions and not being able to separate his own family situation from Emily’s proved to Joe his actions have consequences that can have dire affects to others. Of course this realization ties into his pending court case.
The entire movie is filmed in the 911 operations center, and the only character seen is Joe, all the other characters are just voices over the phone. And this is why it’s long to me, and why it just seems so repetitive at times. He is constantly going thru the same motions calling local police, calling the highway patrol, monitors showing the progress of the forest fire. Personally, I needed another character’s perspective of the storyline, be it the abducted woman, the abductor or even the highway patrol operators that he is constantly yelling at over the phone.
The plot of this movie, a woman abducted, small children alone in the family home, forest fires raging, an almost manic 911 operator heading the search for the woman….sounds like a terrific movie but it’s just so slow. It seems like it took forever to get to the real story of the abduction, and when we did finally get there, it was a good plot twist. The transformation of Joe, from brash and aggressive at the movie’s beginning, to humbled repentant Joe accepting his fate is good, but it just seemed a LONG time coming.
“The Guilty” is rated C+, mainly due to the slow pace of the first half of the movie. I do appreciate how the writers brought everything to a close, that’s why the review got a +.
As for a beverage, Joe never gets to go out for a beer with his co-worker, so I think we should all raise a glass to Joe. Congrats to Joe for ultimately putting on your big boy pants and taking responsibility for your actions.
