The Guilty

“Do you know who the police are? We’re pro­tec­tors. We pro­tect peo­ple who need help.” Jakob Cedergren’s Asger, an alarm dis­patch­er at the end of his teth­er, is com­fort­ing a six-year-old-girl through the phone. Her mother’s been kid­napped by her ex-hus­band and it’s a race against time to catch the crim­i­nal before the sit­u­a­tion shifts to mur­der. The young girl’s voice is muf­fled by the sta­t­ic, but to Asger, the case is clear. Unfor­tu­nate­ly he couldn’t be fur­ther from the truth.

The advan­tage of bind­ing a crime nar­ra­tive to an office set­ting is how nat­u­ral­ly you can with­hold infor­ma­tion from the pro­tag­o­nist, and in turn, the audi­ence. Fear of the unknown is a pow­er­ful weapon, and direc­tor Gus­tav Möller wields it with gus­to. He drip-feeds plot points and final stretch rev­e­la­tions that threat­en to turn the whole pro­ce­dure on its head. Until its last about-face, it works.

The plot pro­gres­sion rarely feels con­trived, the twists are shock­ing with­out being exploita­tive, and the ten­sion is dialled up to the point where Asger has to rip those dials from his desk. When he’s instruct­ing the moth­er down the phone to breathe slow­ly and calm her­self, you’re not sure whether it’s for her ben­e­fit, his, or yours.

This par­tic­u­lar case is thrilling, but its specifics hard­ly mat­ter. The Guilty is much more a char­ac­ter study of one man slow­ly unrav­el­ling across a taut 90 min­utes. At one point, the grainy noise of wind­shield wipers forms a thump­ing sound­track. He may be con­fined to a swiv­el chair, but his head­space is every­where. A back­sto­ry revealed in jerks and jolts makes it clear that his role as a dis­patch­er is the only source of self-worth Asger has left.

Even­tu­al­ly, he sets his sights on sal­va­tion; the inves­ti­ga­tion recedes to back­ground noise. Try as he might to help the lit­tle girl on the oth­er end of the phone, he’s unable to help himself.