The Guilty

Director: Antoine Fuqua
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Riley Keough, Peter Sarsgaard, Eli Goree, Ethan Hawke, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Christiana Montoya, Paul Dano, Gillian Zinser
Running Time: 90 min.
Rating: R

★★★ (out of ★★★★) 

It's understandable that some just won't be onboard for Antoine Fuqua's single location crime thriller The Guilty, citing its superficial similarities to 2013's The Call, starring Halle Berry. There's also a general belief that movies advertised as "thrillers" should take place in various locales, with breakneck action scenes involving multiple actors playing characters engaged in direct conflict with each other. It hasn't helped that recent circumstances have given us less of that than we've ever imagined, causing the novelty of these stripped down efforts to wear off considerably. But despite a title that makes it sound more like a Grisham adaptation, the thrills Fuqua provides are slightly more cerebral in nature and are kind of a departure for a filmmaker known for bombastic efforts like Training Day, Olympus Has Fallen and The Equalizer. Nothing he does feels small, but this arguably comes closest, clocking in at a tight hour and a half that's best described as a claustrophobic morality play centering around a polarizing, even intensely dislikable protagonist. 

Playing a man unexpectedly forced to come to terms with his failings, Jake Gyllenhaal's performance finds the actor again in Nightcrawler mode, nearly dripping in emotional and physical desperation for the film's entire duration. He's somewhat of a monster, easily triggered and prone to fits of explosive rage while giving us glimpses of someone with an urgent need to help that isn't coming from the healthiest place. But that matters less upon realizing a personality this damaged may actually be a better fit for this emergency than most. Never held accountable or called out on anything, it's his day of reckoning, with Gyllenhaal suspensely holding this character's feet to the fire right through to its twist-laden finale. 

Embattled LAPD officer Joe Baylor (Gyllenhaal) is working the night shift as a dispatcher at the 911 call center following an unspecified incident for which he's awaiting a hearing the following day. Already on his last nerve due to that and problems with his ex-wife Jess (Gillian Zinser) over their daughter, Joe receives call from a woman named Emily (Riley Keough), who reveals she's been abducted by a man in a white van. Without a plate number to go on and fires blazing in the L.A. area making visibility difficult, Joe's forced to grasp at any lead he can, including Emily's ex-husband and prime suspect Henry (Peter Sarsgaard) and their scared six-year old daughter, Abby (Christiana Montoya) While able to contact all of them, the situation proves much more complicated than expected, as the asthmatic, exhausted Joe unravels under the weight of his impending hearing and former partner Rick's (Eli Goree) testimony. Calling upon all his experience and the clock rapidly ticking down, Joe must find a way to save Emily's life, while still fixing his own.

Depending upon perspective, Joe is either the worst person to be on duty at a 911 call center this night or the best. Whether it be supervisors, co-workers or even the callers themselves, he lashes out at or berates anyone with whom he encounters. To say he easily loses his patience would seem to imply he has any to start, as the unknown incident for which he could be facing criminal charges has him at the end of his rope, irritable as ever. But the no-nonsense approach he brings as an officer can't be discounted, even as he frequently oversteps his bounds by bullying everyone involved into doing what he wants so this woman can be found. Sometimes it works, with fellow officers and dispatchers caving to his demands, but in many other instances it doesn't, checked and reminded at every turn he isn't exactly in a power position given his own potential legal problems. 

There are many points where Gyllenhaal makes you respect the fact that Joe's highly aggressive tactics and experience are needed to get this done, since without that, it's entirely impossible the call would be in the hands of someone lesser qualified or not nearly as invested in following through. This is the rollercoaster the actor takes us on, as Joe's outbursts of anger are interspersed with quieter moments of consolation he offers Emily that can only come from both being parents. It's through this, and the crime crime Joe's been accussed of, that we can finally view his behavior in full context, grasping his obsessive determination to rescue this woman. 

Fuqua keeps us entrenched enough in the plot to distract from the fact all the action takes place entirely in the call center, even as it's Gyllenhaal taking us through all the painful modulations of this officer's night from hell. There are some familar names providing the disembodied voices at the other end of the phone, but you'd be hard-pressed to recognize any without looking at the credits, which was a smart casting move that keeps focus only on the story. Of them, Riley Keough probably has the heaviest lifting to do as Emily, caught in a perpetual state of fear and distress that only worsens with each call and subsequent development.  The plot's stretched a little thin in the last act as it boils to a point where you really expect things could bleed over into the "real world." But other than brief flashbacks and hazy glimpses of vans and headlights, it doesn't really go there and whether it should have will likely provide debate fodder for afterwards. 

Since the whole movie is essentially an escalating series of phone calls, it's possible a surprise excursion out of this call center could have given the already suspenseful finish an extra jolt. Of course, that could just as easily misfire so it's tough to blame Fuquaua and screenwriter Nic Pizzolatto for so closely adhering to the 2018 Danish film on which it's based. Both for better and worse The Guilty surprises, starting as one story before evolving into something slightly different and more ambitious, the hints of such were being dropped the entire time. But Gylennhaal turns that occasionally frustrating journey into a deeper character study, providing glimpses into this man's damaged psyche, transcending whatever creative limitations may have existed on the page.     

Mad Max: Fury Road

Director: George Miller
Starring: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Riley Keough, Zoë Kravitz, Abbey Lee, Courtney Eaton, Josh Helman, Nathan Jones
Running Time: 120 min.
Rating: R

★★★ ½ (out of ★★★★)

There's always that risk of feeling completely lost or out of the loop when the latest film in a long-running franchise with which you have no familiarity is released. And in the rare event it's celebrated to the extent that George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road is, it's easy to have a debate in your head whether you should even go through the trouble of seeing it. While that might be a close-minded thing to say, we all have those blank spaces in our moviegoing and it's a legitimate concern that my inability to get around to watching 1979's Mad Max, 1981's Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior or 1985's Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome could create a self-inflicted roadblock in any potential appreciation of the new film. But 10 minutes in, the female protagonist drives her War Rig right through those preconceived notions and I'm completely sold, up to speed and fully engulfed in the universe Miller created and has now returned to. No explanations necessary because it's right there on the screen, so much so that it takes until about an hour for an actual conversation to occur. In many ways, this should have been the highest-grossing movie worldwide because it speaks the one universal language: Action. Everything revealed is done so visually, and once Miller gets his hooks in, your his.

Technically, this delivers unlike any recent entry in the sci-fi/action genre, with effects, production design, action sequences and cinematography so spectacular you must be thinking this is some kind of a joke as you watch, mouth agape at what's transpiring.  If it's a common, justified complaint that we're beaten down every year by uninspired computer-generated mayhem, this is its cure and a beating I'd gladly take again with a smile on my face. Striving for artistic excellence absent in most movies of its ilk, it tells its story expertly with a hardly a misstep to be found. Hearing that a certain movie "needs to seen in a theater" usually causes my eyes to immediately roll back into my head, but the size and scope of this project legitimately demands it. Those prematurely proclaiming it one of the greatest action movies of all-time may only have to wait a few years before discovering the possibility they weren't that far off the mark.

Set in a future, post-apocalyptic desert wasteland where water and gasoline are in short supply, the grizzled Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) is captured by a group of War Boys, led by the ruthless Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), who takes him to the Citadel where he'll be imprisoned as a blood donor. But when Joe sends out one of his lieutenants, Furiosa (Charlize Theron), in a rig to collect gasoline, he realizes she's stolen his Five Wives selected for breeding and gone off course, double-crossing him. Joe enlists an entire army, including a sick War Boy named Nux (Nicholas Hoult) who will stop at nothing to impress him, and has Max strapped to the hood of his truck for blood supply. Looking to make it to the "Green Place" with the women and escape Joe's tyranny, Furiosa's path will cross with Max and Nux's, resulting in a combustible situation that test everyone's loyalty and will to survive.

There's a thrilling chase sequence that seems to last about twenty minutes in the front half of the picture and  the highest compliment that can be given to it is that you don't feel as if your senses have been pummeled and are actually looking forward to whatever follows. Since Miller and cinematographer John Seale are such pros at sfilming these scenes, the action is the setup and there's never a doubt as to what's happening at any given moment. One of the script's biggest strengths is that we're immediately keyed in to the decisions these characters make and why without the burden of needless expository dialogue.

Furiosa's motivations are clear early on, as she intends to be the one who shakes things up, leading a surprising rebellion that lets Immortan Joe (clad in a terrifying Skeletor-like breathing mask) know that, even in a desperate, post-apocalyptic wasteland, these women aren't his property, nor is anyone else. And Theron is in full ass-kicking mode, giving the one-armed Furiosa a death stare that would send any potential threat heading for the hills before she even throws a punch or fires a shot, both of which she does plenty of. The arc of Hardy's Max and Hoult's Nux is a little more complicated, but no less riveting.

As the maniacal loner and prisoner finally getting a taste of freedom, there's an air of mystery surrounding what Max will actually do with it because he's flat-out dangerous. He could easily align with Furiosa or become her and the girls' worst enemy at the drop of a hat and while Hardy's performance has widely been labeled as merely sufficient in the face of Theron's, it's worth considering how effortlessly he replaces Mel Gibson with hardly anyone noticing. Nux's job as a character is to essentially sacrifice himself for Joe's greater cause so what resonates about Hoult in the role is how the realization slowly washes over him that it may not be worth it and he'd rather be a human being than a weapon. And The Five Wives (played by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Riley Keough, Zoë Kravitz, Abbey Lee and Courtney Eaton) are hardly portrayed as passive damsels in distress, often taking a surprisingly active roles in the carnage as Miller also lets each of their personalities shine through, simultaneously subverting and exploiting their supermodel images for the good of the story.

This feels entirely like how action movies used to be made in the 1980's and it's arguable the chase scenes and action sequences (which pretty much compose every minute of its length) give Star Wars: The Force Awakens a run for its money in terms of production design and its balance of CGI and practical effects. You could call Miller's creation a throwback but doing so would almost imply it isn't the real thing or in any way feels like a reboot or remake in any traditional sense. There's a lot to take in at once in terms of what's on screen so it's not unusual that your jaw suddenly drops at the visual inventiveness of  it all, such as the guitar player strapped to the front of the rig or the "polecats" of Joe's army.   And because there's so little dialogue, the music has to carry much of the load, with Junkie XL's recognizably pulse-pounding score more than delivering the goods.

As big an achievement as this is, and how little it feels directed by a 70-year-old, it's accomplishments are primarily technical, making it difficult to gauge just how much stayed with me after the credits rolled. It's easy to imagine watching the movie multiple times with little difficulty because it's so exciting, but there is a nagging worry that its pleasures, as considerable as they are, may only run skin deep. Of course, this could just be a side effect of it being a genre picture or possibly where my unfamiliarity with the franchise prevents it from leaving the long-lasting impact it would on someone who grew up with the original films.

While nostalgia admittedly went a long way in covering for some of The Force Awakens' shortcomings in the minds of many, it's nearly impossible to level that accusation here. And there's nothing at all average in the execution of it, as Miller temporarily breaks down the barrier that's historically prevented action movies from gaining critical respectability. Thematically, there is more to it if you're willing to read between the lines to see this as a Biblical allegory about feminism, war, oppression or the environment, but Fury Road's ultimate value comes in the pure joy of just simply experiencing it.