Review: The Guilty (Den skyldige)

In the gripping Danish thriller, The Guilty (Den skyldige), Jakob Cedergren portrays Asger Holm, of which we know the following: he is a police officer currently chained to desk duty at the Emergency Services call centre pending a court case of which details are sparingly parsed. His marriage is troubled, perhaps as a result of this case, for which he is due to deliver testimony the following day. Though there are reassurances that everything will turn out fine, it is clear that much is riding on the outcome.

In short, Asger is under pressure. It's also all too evident that he has no patience for what he feels are the tedious trivialities that are part and parcel of this desk job. He's not particularly sympathetic to the first batch of callers, displaying hints of an abrasive and judgemental nature. He obviously wants to be back out on the streets and in the fray where he believes he belongs. So perhaps there's an underlying need to prove his worth not only to himself but to his superiors when he immediately invests in a phone call from a woman named Iben (excellently voiced by Jessica Dinnage), whom he surmises has been kidnapped by her husband Michael (Johan Olsen). Some quick-thinking detective work yields more information - she's trapped in a white van being driven on a motorway, she has two young children that have been left by themselves in their home, one of whom shares that her parents had a heated argument, there was the presence of a knife, her mother was taken away and she pleads with Asger to please return her mommy back safe and sound. Frustrated by the call centre's protocol, Asger goes way off script and takes matters into his own hands.

The Guilty works beautifully on so many levels. It demonstrates how those in power often abuse that power because of inherent prejudices and misassumptions that are guised, not always on purpose, as good intentions. Asger's decisions and his ensuing actions make matters worse rather than better, and the moment when he well and truly realises this is about as powerful as anything one will see in recent memory. Of course, much of this is due to Cedergren's tour-de-force performance but also to Gustav Möller's meticulously calibrated direction. One character, single setting, real-time films often veer into the gimmicky, but Möller deftly sidesteps this by crafting tension not necessarily from the narrative but from every flicker of emotion that registers across Cedergren's face. It's a master class in using constraints, budgetary or otherwise, and producing a work that is rich, complex, and fully realised.

The Guilty (Den skyldige)

Directed by: Gustav Möller

Written by: Gustav Möller, Emil Nygaard Albertsen

Starring: Jakob Cedergren, Jessica Dinnage, Omar Shargawi, Johan Olsen, Katinka Evers-Jahnsen, Jacob Lohmann