Brief Story Line
A 911 officer named Joe Baylor (Jake Gyllenhaal - Spider-man: Far From Home, Nightcrawler etc) was working the night shift on a seemingly very stressful day when Los Angeles was hit by a large forest fire. He was having trouble concentrating due to personal reasons. When he got a 911 distress call from a woman named Emily (Riley Keough - Logan Lucky, The Girlfriend Experience TV series etc), Joe was a bit skeptical at first but he managed to find out that she was being abducted.
Due to being constrained at his workplace, Joe must find ways to help Emily using whatever assistance he could get. Things got further frustrating for Joe when he kept getting calls from reporter to find out his side of the story and the limited time he had to save Emily.
So how would the story conclude? Find them all in this quite suspenseful and interesting thriller movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Like I said above, the premise of this movie was very interesting and I thought it would be very intense and suspenseful from start to finish. And it did not take too long for it to reach the interesting part. As the story progressed, the suspense was indeed felt during the time when Joe was connected with Emily. It actually reminded me a bit about the 2004 movie Cellular (starring Chris Evans and Kim Bassinger) where a kidnapped victim was somehow connected to a regular person who tried to save her.
However, the intensity in this movie was a bit inconsistent to my personal opinion as there were plenty of moments when they involved Joe's personal crisis, it felt like the foot was taken off the pedal. But I guess that was the intention of the story, whereby the focus was actually on Joe's struggle to help the abducted woman while struggling to handle his own problems. For me who was expecting a fully suspenseful time, this felt a bit lacking, although I had to admit that Jake Gyllenhaal did make a quite strong performance.
This movie was directed by Antoine Fuqua (The Equalizer 2 and its predecessor, Brooklyn's Finest and few others) who also served as the producer. I noticed during the closing credit that the film was based on Den Skyldige which from what I read on the internet was a 2018 Danish movie of similar premise. I myself was quite amazed by how efficient the film was, as almost throughout the entire time the location was only in the 911 Dispatch office.
Aside from Gyllenhaal as the lead cast and Riley Keough as the distressed caller, there were also the support voice cast of Ethan Hawke (24 Hours to Live, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets etc), Peter Sarsgaard (The Magnificent Seven 2016 version etc), Eli Goree (Ballers TV series etc), Paul Dano (12 Years a Slave etc) and few others. In addition there was the brief appearance of Christina Vidal (Training Day TV series etc) as Joe's superior Sergeant Denise Wade and Adrian Martinez (Focus etc) as Joe's co-worker Manny. They were generally OK in term of providing support roles.
One thing that I liked about the movie was the twist which was quite surprising as there was no hint of it whatsoever. The story itself was interesting, but I might have preferred it better had the focus was more on the suspense, especially since the film's short synopsis and trailer suggested this much. Overall though I still enjoyed the movie as it was unique and had interesting premise. The film felt intelligent especially when dealing with the saving of the victim plus that great twist to give a shocked feeling.
So if you are looking for such movie, you would definitely get it here. This is certainly the type of movie that critics loved (which could be seen by its high rating). However, if you want full suspense with some action as well, then I think the other movie I mentioned earlier might be more suitable for you. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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