Why the Fuck Should I Watch: THE GUILTY?
Why the fuck should you watch “The Guilty”?
• You have wondered how fucked up it is to work as 911 dispatcher.
• You are not afraid to let your imagination run wild, as the film let's you imagine the horrors on the basis of phone calls.
• You eat tension with bacon for breakfast.
• Thriller meets crime-drama in Nordic setting makes you say "Ja!".
This little Danish drama-thriller gem is a concept driven film about a fishy police officer that has been signed to do some off-field dispatch work. On his final day he gets a call that makes him weirdly passionate. He goes way off his obligations and limits to help a woman that he assumes to be kidnapped. The story makes you imagine the action and scenery behind the phone calls and think of the decisions that the dispatchers makes while trying to help the person in trouble.
As the film stays between four walls all the way from the beginning to the end, you have to do most of the work by following closely the dialogue and picking up every detail for your brain. This can be quite painful, as the story gets darker and darker. What are you ready to hear and imagine? And how the fuck can dispatchers deal with all the shit in the world that is channeled to their ears? Are you ready to find out what kind of awful stuff they potentially hear?
Generally, the story is quite smartly arranged, the concept works, but something is missing. Some social relevance seems lacking, thematic weight is too light, and the story seems a little narrow. But the little ingredients that the film puts together to make this harsh, salty and hard bread painfully eatable are well enough mixed together.
Why the fuck you shouldn’t watch “The Guilty"?
• You don't like simplicity. You need to be constantly blasted with massive visuals, more than human characters, worldwide locations, and exploding scores.
• You are afraid of your imagination and need to keep it locked in a cage. Just in case.
• You don't want to be reminded that terrible, terrible events happen in the world all the time and seemingly moral persons make awful decisions.
