The Guilty is a single-location suspense thriller starring Jake Gyllenhaal and the voices of other actors (surprise! It’s certainly a Covid production). Jake takes a 911 call and spends the majority of the movie using his particular set of skills as a detective (apparently) to help the kidnapped woman on the other end of the phone.

I was constantly on and off throughout this thriller. Sometimes I was engaged with the suspense of the calls, sometimes I thought it just needed to end. And the bare bones of a slowly revealed story for Jake Gyllenhaal’s angry gonna-explode-at-any-minute 911 operator wasn’t half as interesting as they thought it was going to be.

In fact, whoever put this powder-keg-giving-off-sparks a citizen-facing job as a 911 operator needs to have THEIR heads examined. Gyllenhaal’s character is just unlikable, rude, aggressive, angry, and a jerk. Yes, he’s legitimately trying to save lives and that’s heroic and all… but just watching him interact with other members of the public or his own co-workers made my skill crawl. And not in a good Nightcrawler kind of way. It was a miss for me, dog.

The Guilty is a competent enough single-location thriller with some good acting. The script is a problem though as it couldn’t make me care about the lead and only partially cared about the call. Not a bad movie overall… just wanting.

Score: 76