The Guilty (2021)

 Score: 2.5 / 5

Typical of Hitchcockian fare, The Guilty operates as a man-on-the-phone thriller that hinges on his own reliability as a protagonist. Joe Baylor was an officer in the LAPD before an event disgraced him, demoted him to a 9-1-1 dispatcher, and now has him set to go to court. The event apparently involved no small amount of controversy, and so he furtively looks around the call center and avoids the gaze of others. He regularly uses his inhaler -- too often, in fact; one wonders if it's his stress level, or if he was already asthmatic and the raging wildfires are exacerbating his condition. Indeed, his workplace features a large wall of televisions tuned in to ongoing news reports of an inferno encroaching on Los Angeles. Among his regular calls, he must shut down the attempts of reporters sneakily trying to get his inside scoop. And then there are the calls he makes to his estranged family, trying to say a simple "good night" to his young daughter.

He's clearly not handling the stress well, and as played by Jake Gyllenhaal, the character clearly has some issues with anger management, bedside manner, and snap judgments. His short temper leads him to argue with a panicked caller who has apparently been robbed by a prostitute in one of the film's few comedic moments. Another time, more cruelly, he criticizes a caller for substance abuse; scenes like these stand in stark contrast to the main plot: he gets a call from a terrified woman (Riley Keough) who he surmises has been abducted. He quickly learns that she has a six-year-old daughter who may be in danger, too. Immediately (and alarmingly) invested in the case, he tries to operate as both a responding officer and a dispatcher, jumping from phone line to phone line to corral the necessary units. In the hands of Gyllenhaal, it's a master class in acting from the most consistently unpredictable and excellent actors working today.

But, in the hands of writer Nic Pizzolatto (True Detective) and director Antoine Fuqua (The Magnificent Seven, Southpaw, King Arthur), the film's tone and themes vacillate wildly. What starts as a character-based thriller becomes an oddly unwieldy radio play of voices and ideas that reverberate without really sticking. Joe's rash responses -- including swearing to help Emily and her daughter without having enough information -- reveal the film's dubious critique of toxic white maleness in the American police system. His ignorant bravado and possessive masculinity cause serious problems and result in further violence, but the film's constant attempts to elicit our sympathy through Joe's well-meaning demeanor undermine the critique. I suppose we could be grateful this didn't lean into any discussions about Defunding the Police; instead, we get a watered-down survey of concepts relating to hegemonic cops in disgrace.

This movie's waste of potential themes notwithstanding, it's a wildly entertaining time because of Fuqua's focus on his greatest asset. Gyllenhaal is in almost every scene and still steals the movie, committing his every breath to conveying the inner (and often outer) turmoil of his character. His operatic finale rang a little melodramatic to me, but that's pretty standard for Fuqua's flicks. The movie occasionally overemploys typical thriller devices to ramp up the tension, like the approximate GPS he uses to track callers or the hellish flames projected from the rear wall of the office. And so, all in all, it's a reasonably good time at the movies if you want to rest your artistic intelligence and let the mellow side of darker thrillers carry you along.

The Magnificent Seven (2016)

Score: 3.5 / 5

The Magnificent Seven might be the answer for those of us who weren't totally happy with The Hateful Eight, and while it's a hell of a ride, it's perhaps not as superlative as its title suggests.

I confess, I haven't seen the 1960 original, nor have I seen the Japanese film on which that was based. On its own terms, though, this film still manages to feel like a rehashing of old tropes and images. Westerns are a dying breed (if not dead since 1992's Unforgiven), and it was perhaps too much to ask for a novel Western that isn't paired with horror (The Walking Dead) or science fiction (Cowboys & Aliens). The camera pushes us into a realm of nostalgia with sweeping vistas of the dusty West and a sepia color palette. The story, too, is so simple that it reads more like a fable or tall-tale, which might have been just what writer Nic Pizzolatto (of True Detective fame) intended.

The real pleasure here is the cast, who are so well-suited for their parts that we don't doubt for an instant that any of them belong in their dirty world. Vincent D'Onofrio steals his scenes with humor and some surprising brutality. I was only a little annoyed by the casting of Peter Sarsgaard as the Big Bad, but then, every time he's on screen I feel a little annoyed. Maybe it's his voice. Everyone else was great in their motley crew of bizarre characters, and we even see, if too briefly, badass lone woman in Haley Bennett, heartthrob pioneer in Matt Bomer, and squinty-eyed henchman in Cam Gigandet.

It's a rousing, swashbuckling experience, and it serves as ample distraction for its over-two-hour running time. Explosive and fast, it features some of the better choreographed shoot-outs in recent movies (though nothing beats Anthropoid's climax), and it dishes out plenty of good humor and heart with the action. **SPOILER WARNING** Its surprisingly dour ending feels a bit out of place. It's good, mind, but the extended violent climax might have paid off a tad more had the film played up the camaraderie and humor earlier in the picture. As it is, the ending is moving and sobering; not so much to bring down your action movie high, but not enough to make the movie stick with you after you leave. With a little more heart earlier on, the ending could have been downright cathartic.

That said, the ending could easily set up a sequel. I, for one, would love to see more Red Harvest (and his biceps) on the screen.

IMDb: The Magnificent Seven

Southpaw (2015)

Score: 4 / 5

Man is an athletic champion. Man suffers personal tragedy. Man struggles to fix his life. Man trains to win again. Man wins contest and regains his life. Add that he's white and wealthy, and try not to gag.

We've all heard it. We've all seen it. There is literally nothing fresh about it. So how did I end up gasping and crying my way through the two-hour sports drama?

Because Southpaw is different. Because director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, King Arthur) holds no punches back from the brutality of the sport in question. Because cinematographer Mauro Fiore (Avatar) keeps things heavy, dark, and gritty. Because writer Kurt Sutter (Sons of Anarchy) poetically captures the horrors of an environment that is usually glamorized in our culture. Because the late great composer of epics James Horner (Titanic) very subtly mirrors our protagonist's descent into hell and eventual redemption with his score.

And, of course, the bulk of praise goes to Jake Gyllenhaal, who once again proves his determination to transform himself into his characters. After last year's Nightcrawler, when he lost weight, grew out his hair, and articulately perfected his character, Gyllenhaal has here bulked up, buzzed his hair, and solemnly retreated into the recesses of his mind. Much like Tom Hardy in last year's The Drop, Gyllenhaal keeps us guessing as to his exact personality because he so flawlessly portrays a man who has given his all to his body and the sport that he can scarcely articulate his feelings. And yet he allows us a few moments of genuine vulnerability, especially when we see him with his daughter; we also see, through some magic he works, his true character in his moments alone as he battles his demons, both in the ring and out.

If you know me at all, you know I love horror movies. I can usually handle the violence, no sweat. But I have a lot of trouble with watching fistfighting, which often happens out of the blue (remember Gangster Squad? Sheesh). I was expecting a fair amount here, but I had to cover my eyes a lot in this movie. That just goes to show, though, how determined the cast and crew were to show the physical effects of boxing on the human body. Fuqua never shies away from the blood, the sweat, and (most unnerving for me) the close-ups. It's in these moments that this film doesn't feel like most sports dramas, in which the sweat makes the characters look glorious, and the brief dripping blood is the most disturbing part of the film.

Rather, here we see horrors well beyond the field. The disparities between celebrity athletes and street fighters, the financial problems of inner-city youth, the isolating effects of a parent's death on her child. Fuqua and Sutter also (and, I think, most successfully) hide certain moments of violence from us, probably to keep the already dark film out of the realm of exploitation or horror. They don't refrain from discussing these moments, or even from seeing their tragic aftermath. But we don't see, for example, the fatal shooting of our protagonist's wife. We don't see the death of the young black man our protagonist is training. But we don't have to. Those moments are quite brutal enough, attesting to the abilities of our filmmakers. And the absence of these moments is more than made up for in the (in my opinion) extravagantly violent boxing scenes.

If nothing else, at least see this picture for Gyllenhaal. He's incredible.

IMDb: Southpaw