The Guilty, written and directed by Gustav Moller - Eight out of 10

The Guilty, written and directed by Gustav Moller

Eight out of 10

The Guilty is a formidable film.

One of the most remarkable features is that this is a one-man show, for Jakob Cedergren is the only one that matters in the script.

He is police officer that has done something very wrong, indeed, terrible, as we would learn and has been sent to Emergency Services.

This is where he first gets a call from a man who had been mugged; his computer and wallet had been taken.

The way the hero handles this request already suggests that this is a complicated intriguing character.

On the one hand, the caller is somewhat obnoxious, but on the other, the fact that Asger Holm suggests leaving him to steam for a while appears exaggerated to some extent.

To say from the start, in a recent poll, it was discovered that the citizens of Denmark are the ones that like my compatriots the least in the European Union and that has created a bias.

I am not sure if I had loved them before – there are issues that have no place here, but can be checked by possible interested parties here http://realinistories.blogspot.com/ - but after that poll was published, there is no affection lost for these rather superior men and women…

The man who calls to complain about the mugging was in the Red District and seemed to have been looking for paid sex, which at least in one Scandinavian country is illegal for the man, not the sex worker.

However, that country might be Sweden, not Denmark, which is the place where The Guilty is set.

The next call is much more serious and whereas in the first place it looks like a mistake, it then seems to be an abduction.

The crucial, main attraction of this feature is that although it has a familiar development for about one hour, there is an original, different path form that moment on.

A woman, Iben, is forced to talk without giving details, transported as she is in a vehicle by a man who has kidnapped her.

Asger calls for support in the region where the call is located, on a highway going north from Copenhagen and gives the details he has extracted by asking the caller to pretend to speak to her daughter.

The vehicle the police would be looking for is a white van, but when they stop one, they find it is not the man they are looking for, Michael.

The hero then calls the house of the woman and talks to her very young daughter, Mathilde, who relates the visit of the father who is separated from the wife, who had taken the mother and a knife.

Asger tries to talk to Michael and convince him to stop, convinced that this is The Guilty party and as he says at one stage –

“You should be executed”

We are certainly dealing with a complicated protagonist – we would slowly find that he had been involved in a very serious event and wants his friend Rashid to testify in his defense, telling a lie to support his claim and get his acquittal – although at a later stage he admits his Guilt and appears prepared to face the consequences.

To protect the children, he requires a police presence at their home and the officers dispatched discover the gruesome murder of the infant boy, brother of Thilde.

Illegally, Asger summons the help of his partner, Rashid, even when he finds that the latter has been drinking alcohol, four glasses.

He wants his friend to find information about Michael, breaking in his flat, to see what his destination might be.

Meanwhile, he has a communication with Iben, who is in the van and is instructed by the hero to put her seat belt on and seeing as the husband who drives the car does not wear one, to pull the hand brake.

She does that and then she is in the back of the van, where she is told by Asger to look for a weapon.

All she finds is a brick that the police officer insists she must hit her abductor with, when he stops the van.

Then there is an incredible twist to the story and The Initial Guilty One becomes the innocent and it all proves how easy it is to make a mistake.

Still, there is the question of what Asger Holm had done and his apparent philosophy that The Guilty must be punished very severely, killed if the blame is large enough…