Gyllenhaal gives Fuqua’s ‘The Guilty’ its flame

Above : Jake Gyllenhaal pulls off a bravura performance in Antoine Fuqua’s “The Guilty.” (Photo/Netflix)

Movie review : “The Guilty,” directed by Antoine Fuqua, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Riley Keough (voice), Peter Sarsgaard (voice), Ethan Hawke (voice). Streaming on Netflix.

Movies that depend almost exclusively on a single actor can’t be easy to direct. British filmmaker Steven Knight managed to do so in his 2013 film “Locke,” despite the whole 85-minute running time being focused on a single character driving a car and talking on the phone.

Of course, it helped that the actor Knight depended on to carry the action was the ridiculously talented Tom Hardy .

American filmmaker Antoine Fuqua attempts something similar in his film “The Guilty,” which is based on the 2018 Danish film titled – and forgive my brutal pronunciation – “Den Skyldige.” Like that film, “The Guilty” follows a simple concept: Jake Gyllenhaal plays Joe Baylor, a Los Angeles police officer who, facing a disciplinary trial, has been demoted to dispatch duty.

Told in real time, we watch as Baylor – embarrassed, frustrated, belligerent but most of all concerned about the upcoming trial – finds himself late one night shift trying to help a woman who he believes has been kidnapped. Most of the 90-minute film focuses on Baylor as he negotiates with the woman (voiced by Riley Keough ), then with the presumed kidnapper (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard ) and in between with members of various law-enforcement agencies, most of whom he treats with impatience if not outright impertinence.

This includes everyone from his immediate supervisor in the dispatch center to his regular patrol sergeant (voiced by Ethan Hawke ), from a strictly professional and no-nonsense California Highway Patrol dispatcher to both his estranged wife and his worried police partner – who, by the way, is scheduled to testify on his behalf the following morning.

In the Danish film, directed and co-written by Gustav Möller , the actor Jakob Cedergren plays the officer, named Asger Holm. And Cedergren brings a certain kind of Nordic demeanor to the character of Holm – a bit aloof, disdainful of those around him, as concerned about his future as Baylor is but ultimately a bit above everything around him – until his own situation with a voice on the phone brings him down to Earth.

Gyllenhaal imbues his character with a far different feel. Athletic, tattooed and mercurial, he carries the kind of street attitude that – authentic or not – is familiar to anyone acquainted with the movies of Antoine Fuqua.

Speaking of which, Fuqua emerged from the world of music videos to make 2001’s “Training Day,” the film that would earn Denzel Washington his second Academy Award – his first in the Best Actor category. Since then Fuqua’s been associated with a variety of genres: war film (2003’s “Tears of the Sun”), medieval costume drama (2004’s “King Arthur”) and contemporary action-thriller (2007’s “Shooter” and the two “Equalizer” films, 2014 and 2018, both starring Washington).

He also directed the 2016 version of  “Magnificent Seven,” of which the less said the better. Remaking, not to mention reconfiguring, one of the greatest of Western movies is the cinematic equivalent of a fool’s errand. But I digress.

Fuqua’s 2015 film boxing film “Southpaw,” while no “Raging Bull” – one of Martin Scorsese’s masterpieces – did manage to feature an intense lead performance by Gyllenhaal. Which is likely one reason why he was cast in “The Guilty”: Few actors, save – again – for Tom Hardy, could match the power that Gyllenhaal brings to the screen as the tormented Joe Baylor.

But give Fuqua credit, too. It has to be difficult to shoot an entire film when the action is limited to two basic areas, both of which require the protagonist mostly to sit behind a desk, staring at a computer screen while talking on a phone. Yet Fuqua manages to make “The Guilty” feel adequately spacious, in the geography both of frame and theme.

Of course, if he ever did feel stuck, all he had to do was focus on Gyllenhaal, who has a face that – even when twisted by rage, desperation or grief – the movie camera can’t help but admire.

An edited version of this review was broadcast previously on Spokane Public Radio.