In a way, everybody is guilty of something. No one is completely clean. Throughout our daily lives, we do certain things that would hold us accountable in a courtroom or at the very least, within the walls of our own conscience. It's a part of being human and walking through life.
For Asger Holm (Jakob Cedergren), an emergency dispatcher with a few skeletons in his closet, the walls of guilt are closing in, but the audience is thankfully kept in the dark for most of Gustav Moller's film, a piece of masterful art that takes a human weakness and spins it on a record player.
"The Guilty" takes place in two rooms inside of one building for the duration of its running time, and revolves around the efforts of Asger over the course of one day in trying to help a woman in distress, Iben (Jessica Dinnage), on the phone. Through a series of phone calls, Asger finds out Iben has been kidnapped, is being held in a van, and being driven to some unknown location. What starts out as a normal day for Asger turns into something else, and ends up testing every single piece of his DNA.
Trust me. You don't even know the half of it, and that's a good thing. Scratch that. It's a great thing. The gift of Moller's film is showing you a few cards in his deck while meticulously shuffling the rest face up, so we see them, but have no clue what they mean.
The misdirection of several fragments of the main plot splinter throughout the rest of the film as the running time increases. "The Guilty" runs at a lean 82 minutes and doesn't waste a single second of your time. There's no filler here. Extra characters. Useless romance. It's Asger, his demons, and the person on the other of the line: be it Iben, a fellow dispatcher, his former partner, or someone that may know what is going on.
Moller's direction keeps you guessing while his script, which he co-wrote with Emil Nygaard Albertsen, keeps you off-guard. Taking a page from Steven Knight's "Locke" and Jeremy Rush's "Wheelman", the action is confined to a small space with a limited amount of characters, and just one face. Everyone we see besides Asger is a blurry mirage.
This wicked marriage of filmmaking and storytelling keeps things intense yet slow boiling at the same time. If you aren't paying attention, you'll miss a potential clue. The best thrillers don't care about your attention span; they just keep moving. Once again, time isn't wasted here.
But Moller isn't just making a thriller just to create an escape-type experience. He wants to talk about human frailty, how we hold so much inside until a breaking point is reached, and the consequences of our actions. How someone works off a limited amount of information, makes judgment calls, and sometimes, pays for a leap to conclusions in the end. The human condition is on display here without calling supreme attention to itself.
Over the course of the film, as he is working through this dilemma, Asger is fighting off something that is arriving soon at his doorstep. We find out he used to be a cop, has been subjected to this lesser profession for a reason, and doesn't care one bit for it. He's cruel to callers at times, telling a woman who just got into a bicycle accident on the street to not ride it drunk. Something from his past is hanging over his head and it's starting to eat away at his soul, which may or may not play into the handling of this kidnapper situation. Without giving too much away, things come to a head and become a little disturbing along the way. "The Guilty" goes to places previous films only think about going.
Cedergren is phenomenal in the lead role. He works hard to make us despise, envy, feel sorry for, and root for Asger throughout the movie. You never feel too close to him or know exactly what has grown on the trees inside his conscience, but you do know he's not evil. Just a guy trying to do the right thing under extreme circumstances. I had no idea the actor existed before I hit "play," and now I want more.
Confession: I watched the final 10 minutes of this film six different times. I couldn't get enough. Due to the snake eyes type energy of the pace and the ingenious script, the finale of "The Guilty" lays into your like a right cross from Mike Tyson in his prime. Calling it powerful isn't enough. It doesn't even come close to doing it justice. It's like saying bacon compliments a sandwich well.
What transpires over the final 10 minutes changes your outlook on Asger, the movie as a whole, and may cause you to take a minute to reflect on a few things in your own life. I watched three days ago and still have it on my mind.
You will not see it coming. Kind of like Gustav Moller's film as a whole. It sneaks up on you, floors you, and waits for you to get up.
*In Danish with English subtitles. Available on YouTube and Amazon Prime for $6.99.
