Antoine Fuqua has been churning out movies for over 20 years at this point, but he’s always struggled to maintain any great degree of consistency throughout his career, although you can’t help but admire his willingness to tackle any genre that comes his way.
The director followed up gritty crime thriller Training Day with Bruce Willis dud Tears of the Sun and historical epic King Arthur, while he’s helmed The Equalizer duology and Olympus Has Fallen for action stars Denzel Washington and Gerard Butler, along with Western remake The Magnificent Seven and boxing drama Southpaw with Jake Gyllenhaal.
Fuqua re-teams with Gyllenhaal for today’s Netflix thriller The Guilty, which marks the filmmaker’s second movie of 2021 after Mark Wahlberg’s awful Paramount+ exclusive Infinite. The contained story follows the actor’s Joe Baylor, a dispatcher who answers an urgent call from a woman that’s been kidnapped. When the line goes dead, the chase is on to find her captor before time runs out.
A remake of the 2018 Danish effort of the same name, Gyllenhaal is winning rave reviews for his one-man showcase, once again reaffirming his credentials as one of his generation’s finest talents. The Guilty is exactly the type of mid budget, high concept genre title that Netflix subscribers love, so don’t be surprised if it’s at the top of the most-watched list by this time tomorrow.
