When film critics crank out their best of the year lists, it’s fair to say that this title will appear in many of them. It’s not just that this Danish film is genuinely good, it’s also that its gimmick makes it stand out. There’s basically just the one actor who appears on screen and there is only just that one scene shot in a single location. Yet it has no difficulty being both very tense and riveting.

Asger Holm is a Danish police officer who is currently assigned to answer calls to the emergency hotline. The system is set up to identify the location and owner of the telephone number that is calling. After dealing with a robbery case that he quickly infers is coming from a man who had just engaged a prostitute in his car. he receives a call from a woman named Iben who seems at first to be calling the wrong number. He realizes however that Iben is speaking obliquely because she is the presence of a man who may have just kidnapped her. By pretending to be calling her child, Iben gives Asger clues such as the fact that she is travelling in a white van. Asger calls the police station for the area in question to send patrol cars to search for the van but they are unable to find the right one. He tries ever more desperate tactics to pin down her location. At the same time, it soon becomes clear that he has a poor relationship with his fellow officers and is under a lot of stress due to legal problems of his own.

Taut, short and tense throughout, The Guilty is another great example of how much one can accomplish with so few resources. Though only the actor playing Asger is ever seen, those who provide the voices of the other characters are just as important as we follow the evolution of the story. There’s the chilling voice of Mathilde for example, the child let alone at home, and Rashid, Asger’s own partner who he asks to break the law in search of clues. Beyond just being a clever filmmaking gimmick, the film also provides a rare behind the scenes perspective of a police emergency as usually we only ever see events from the point of view of those on the scene. There’s a surprising amount of richness in such a compact film as you ponder why police procedures exist and why the police should react calmly even in the face of an emergency.

Early on, I found myself annoyed by what I thought was a rather unrealistic take on how police would actually respond to such an emergency. After all in a country like Denmark, a woman calling in a kidnapping in progress should kick off a huge police mobilization, so why is a single dispatcher seemingly the only one concerned about the emergency? But that indeed is the point as Asger is supposed to be seen as a bad police officer. Though his concern for Iben is genuine and laudable, his obsession about being in control of the search effort and his insistence that he be kept in the loop at all times makes him a poor choice for being in charge. It’s revealing that when the other dispatch officers notice his agitation and ask him if anything is wrong, he demurs. This makes The Guilty a rare case of a story that advocates professional distance when dealing with people in distress when usually personal concern trump everything. It’s refreshing that the advice Asger’s friend gives him that he should take a break at the end of his shift and let someone else take over no matter what the problem is turns out to be actually justified. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that in a film before.

The great thing about this is that its gimmick is indeed original but everything else about it is just as good. Its themes are rich, there’s a lot complexity going in with the psychologies of the different characters and you have no difficulty following along or feeling the tension even though everything is most conveyed through telephone conversations. It’s a strong contender for one of the best films of the year.