Exhilarating thriller? Guilty

New Danish Nail-biter raises questions and will keep audiences guessing

A title like the one on this Danish police thriller raises a question: Just who is the guilty party? Is it the cynical cop working Denmark’s equivalent of the 911 call centre? The man who just kidnapped a woman, leading to her frantic call? Maybe it’s writer-director Gustav Möller, for clever use of distraction and deception?

One definite innocent party is the audience. The country’s submission for the foreignlanguage Oscar prize this year is nail-bitingly effective, and far too good to qualify as a mere guilty pleasure. It’s a straight-up pleasure, simple as that.

Jakob Cedergren stars as Asger, a burnt-out Copenhagen cop whose contemptuous view of human nature isn’t helped by the calls he takes. When someone reports being mugged by a female assailant in the red-light district, he assumes the victim is a John and lets him stew a while before sending help. To an injured cyclist calling for an ambulance: “Take a taxi, and don’t bike when you’re drunk.”

Then there’s Iben (Jessica Dinnage). She seems reluctant to talk, and Asger quickly figures out it’s because she can’t. She’s

in a car with her abductor, who thinks she’s on the phone to her daughter. Asger works by the book, learning what he can through yes-or-no questions, alerting police to the situation, then sending cops to the woman’s home to comfort her daughter, who’s only six.

That would seem to be it for Asger — his shift is about to end, and ambiguous comments suggest he has other worries, something about being in court the next day. But he can’t seem to let this case go.

Möller keeps us always in the same room as Asger, although for the purposes of cinematography and drama he at one point switches offices and then draws the blinds, just as the plot darkens.

But we never see any of the characters he is speaking to, and must rely on aural clues for information. Will you believe your ears? Or would that make you guilty of jumping to conclusions? The Guilty will keep you guessing.