One has to be a little suspicious of titles that premiered towards the end of 2020 to roughly the middle of 2022.  I do not mean this as a negative, necessarily.  As you will no doubt recall, that was prime COVID lockdown time, and the movie business experienced its share of issues dealing with the pandemic.  You can see a comedic treatment of this phenomenon with The Bubble (2022).  It is a film that hit the issue squarely on the head.  You can see what I am guessing is a byproduct of the protocols used for shooting movies during those years in today’s entry, The Guilty (2021).  Before continuing, please note that what I have just described about film production in the span of those troubled months did not factor into why I chose it.  Instead, in my quick glance at the summary on Netflix, it talked about it focusing on one person trying to save another.  That is enough for this Catholic reviewer to have his interest piqued.  Luckily, the rest of the film did not disappoint, despite it being obviously made with social distancing in mind.

Indeed, the first thing you see in The Guilty got my Catholic attention.  It is part of John 8:32, which says, “and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  And people wonder why Confession is such a big part of Catholicism.  At any rate, there is something weighing on Officer Joe Baylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) as he emerges from a bathroom stall when we first meet him.  It is not the wild fires going on in Los Angeles, or the general sense of a city out of control as contextualized with the opening credits.  I would say it is a place in need of Jesus, but that could describe everywhere, really.  Officer Baylor is working in the 9-1-1 call center, which is another clue that something is wrong.  He is also struggling with asthma, and a ringing in his ears makes it hard for him to concentrate.  With all this, he sits down and starts taking calls from people around the greater Los Angeles area who are ostensibly in need of help.  I add the modifier because as someone more used to working on the streets than operating a phone at a desk, he has a knowing shorthand for dealing with these situations that makes him come off as a jerk.  Patience is a virtue, my friend, and, to be fair, he seems to be aware that he is not the friendliest of people, particularly when his manager, Sergeant Denise Wade (Christina Vidal Mitchell), reminds him about his attitude.  During the course of one of the calls he answers, we learn through conversation with his boss on the regular police force, Sergeant Bill Miller (voiced by Ethan Hawke), that Officer Baylor has a big court appearance the following day that also has him on edge.  Further, he has been separated from his wife, Jess Baylor (voiced by Gillian Zisner), for six months, which means he cannot see his daughter as often as he likes.  This is all set up in order to help us understand why Officer Baylor becomes so focused on the plight of Emily Lighton (voiced by Riley Keough).  She contacts 9-1-1 while she is in the process of being kidnapped by her ex-husband, Henry Fisher (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard).  Officer Baylor does everything he can given the tense situation, but finds that many of the other branches are busy dealing with the myriad other problems disrupting the city and county.  He also is not able to convey enough information to the California Highway Patrol (CHP) dispatcher (voiced by Da’Vine Joy Randolph), meaning he is unable to provide what they need to find the car in which Henry has Emily.  In desperation, Officer Baylor dials the number listed in the database for Emily’s residence, and gets her six-year-old daughter, Abby (voiced by Christina Montoya).  From this conversation, he is able to gather some more information on Henry, but unfortunately is led to believe that Emily’s infant son Oliver is dead.  Now approaching a manic state, Officer Baylor turns to Sergeant Miller.  Sergeant Miller agrees to send a squad car to do a wellness check on the children, but refuses to have his officers break into the home of Henry’s mother, his current address.  For this, Officer Baylor enlists the help of his partner, Rick (voiced by Eli Goree).  Rick is set to testify in Officer Baylor’s trial the next day, but agrees to help out his co-worker.  While Rick searches through what we are told is a messy apartment, Officer Baylor once more makes contact with Emily.  Because of some of the stunts they have pulled in the intervening time, Henry has decided to put her in the back of the van.  This means that Emily and Officer Baylor can speak without Henry hearing.  Officer Baylor advises her to bash Henry in the head with a brick, which is not the most Christian course of action.  Yet, in the course of their dialog, it becomes clear that it had been Emily that had tried to kill Oliver.  As for Henry, while he does have a criminal record, he had been trying to take her back to the psychiatric hospital instead of abducting her.  This last bit of information is corroborated when Rick calls back Officer Baylor and mentions bills from the institution.  Officer Baylor recovers from his shock to talk to Henry, mainly to ask about Emily.  Henry claims to not know where she has gone, but she dials 9-1-1 to get Officer Baylor once more on the line.  This time, she is saying that she is going to jump off an overpass.  None of the usual talking points law enforcement uses in these situations gets through to the suicidal woman.  It is not until he finally admits to having murdered a perpetrator that she finally steps away from the ledge.  This is confirmed by the CHP dispatch, with her telling Officer Baylor that he did a good job.  After this, he goes back to the bathroom, and calls Rick to tell the truth on the stand in court later that day.  This means Officer Baylor will be going to jail, and this is what we hear reported on the news with the final credits rolling.

When Officer Baylor finally admits his guilt at the climactic moment of The Guilty, it fulfills the Scripture passage quoted at the beginning.  He clearly had something on his mind.  Throughout the film, we are led to believe that he will have his day in court and that he will be back to being a regular police detective.  He seems to want that, but despite all his flaws, I think his best quality is a desire to help people.  This is not meant to excuse the crime of murder he committed.  Being a cop is not an easy job, but that is not a reason to be judge, jury, and executioner as he apparently did.  His impatience does not improve how we view him, either.  Yet, there is a great line spoken by Sergeant Wade once Officer Baylor has learned that Emily has been prevented from leaping to her death.  Sergeant Wade says that “broken people save broken people.” Amen.  In one Catholic sense, this is not the most unusual of statements.  We are all broken and in need of the mending that only God can provide.  Further, the movie seems to prove the truth of the previous sentence.  Arguably, the most broken of them all is Officer Baylor.  We can get why he is so tense because of everything going on in his life.  The thing is, particularly when it comes to Faith, is that we tend to give up on it too easily when it does not provide the immediate answers we want, right when we want them.  One of the reminders that Officer Baylor is given throughout is that there are other people that have jobs to do, too.  He thinks he knows better, and in his rush to do something right in the midst of all the wrong he has done leads to him making the wrong assumptions about Emily and Henry.  As I said in the synopsis, patience is a virtue.  There are times when you need to let God do His part.  That is no easy task in such a situation, to be sure.  Yet, Officer Baylor realizes by the end that he has messed up, and that is important.  He shows vulnerability, which is a cousin to truth, and key to having a relationship with God.

As such, The Guilty was a pleasant surprise.  It does have a lot of bad language in it, which is why it has an R rating.  I was also impressed with Gyllenhaal’s performance.  In doing a little extra research on the filming, it appears that my assumption about the COVID protocols was correct.  Director Antoine Fuqua sat in a van somewhere during the entire shoot.  It all makes for some emotional and gripping cinema.