‘The Guilty’ Is Intense, Twist-Filled Film

What might seem like an exercise in minimalist cinema ends up being vastly deeper and more emotionally kaleidoscopic than the apparent sum of its parts. Our primary point of dramatic contact is an errant police officer (played with a sharp, understated power by Jakob Cedergren), demoted to manning the phone at Copenhagen emergency services (ala 911). Going rogue, he becomes embroiled in a troubling case of a divorced man gone wild, an abduction, and grisly matters at home — all conveyed in real time, in the detached dimension of voices and sounds over the phone. Danish director Gustav Möller pulls off a minor miracle with this small, intense and twist-filled film — exciting as a cerebral, filmic venture and touching as a fully, knotty human story.