Brandon at Random Reviews

It just dawned on me that I’m actually a pretty big Jake Gyllenhaal fan. I haven’t seen many of his movies that I haven’t liked and I feel like he always acts spectacularly well. Donnie Darko? Love it. Nightcrawler? He fucking made that whole movie. Zodiac? Omg love it too. Source Code, Prisoners, October Sky? Hell yes.

That’s the thing with “The Guilty” is he’s carrying this movie on his shoulders and it blows me away. It has a real “Rear Window” energy which is one of my fav movies ever! EVER. Jake G plays a 911 operator/former cop who is forced to remain where he is at…dispatch or whatever it’s called while another kind of an emergency is unfurling in the midst of California wildfires, so he’s not getting a ton of help. He also keeps getting pulled away into his own life where he has some stressful shit going on but we don’t understand what that is until late.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with “Rear Window”, first off, fucking watch it, but second it’s a story about a man who is in huge leg casts in a wheelchair who becomes obsessed with the goings on around his apartment complex and he watches everything that’s happening and he suspects one of his neighbors across the way of murder but he’s fucking helpless to do anything about it and he’s just watching the pieces come together. This movie is told exclusively from Gyllenhaal’s POV and you get a similar feeling of helplessness as you try to come to grips with what’s going on and I love it.

This movie is a lot to take in, and it has some disturbing subject matter so if you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen basically. Jake G knocks it out of the park as usual, honestly his performance should’ve merited Oscar consideration imo. And the other people he interacts with both on the phone and at the station are spectacular. Apparently among those other people on the phone are Ethan Hawke and Paul Dano which was a neat surprise.

My goodness, did I ever love this film. Available on Netflix. This is why I’m so hooked on Hollywood, I can’t get enough. Fuck yeah.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“Broken people save broken people.”