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The Guilty

FILM · 2021 · USA

The Guilty

11 archived facts 4 topics

Antoine Fuqua's 2021 remake of The Guilty moves the story to Los Angeles and trades the original's drab call-center setting for sleek screens and a wall of wildfire footage.

  • The Guilty — production image

11 Interesting Facts About The Guilty

Interesting Facts (7)

  1. #001

    Days before shooting was set to begin, someone close to director Antoine Fuqua tested positive for Covid-19, forcing him into isolation. Instead of working on the soundstage with the cast, Fuqua directed the whole film from a van built for cinema and called COLORSPACE. He went on to direct his later projects from COLORSPACE as well.

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  2. #002

    The setting was shifted from Copenhagen to Los Angeles, with the action unfolding amid a huge outbreak of wildfires.

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  3. #003

    The review likens Joe Baylor to Gene Hackman's character in Francis Ford Coppola's "The Conversation," hinting that Joe may be reading the situation to suit his own need for redemption.

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  4. #004

    According to the review, one scene has Joe catching what appears to be a Black Lives Matter protest on TV and flinching at a burning police car.

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  5. #005

    Antoine Fuqua swapped the original's drab call-center rooms for sleek, costly-looking monitors and headsets, along with a video wall displaying California wildfires.

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  6. #006

    The review sets Gyllenhaal's outward, capital-E emoting against Jakob Cedergren's internalized turn in the original, which felt like a bomb waiting to go off.

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  7. #007
    Contains a major spoiler — show

    In Fuqua's version, Emily's stabbed baby miraculously pulls through, whereas the infant died in the original; the review sees this as a more hopeful, Hollywood-style ending.

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Behind the Scenes (1)

  1. #008

    The COVID-19 pandemic meant the film was shot in only 11 days, in October 2020.

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Easter Eggs & References (1)

  1. #009

    The review calls Gyllenhaal's performance a major miscalculation, since it departs so sharply from Jakob Cedergren's more restrained work in the earlier Danish film.

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Deeper Meaning (2)

  1. #010

    The wildfires in the background were added to intensify the hellish crisis of conscience that torments Joe throughout the story.

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  2. #011

    The review contends that moving the story to Los Angeles, a city known for police brutality against people of color, allowed Fuqua to deliver sharp social commentary on America.

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Sources & editorial notes

Reference databases

  • IMDb IMDb title page (trivia)

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