The Guilty  ★★★★

FILMS that restrict themselves to a single location and few characters tend to succeed more often than not.

Acclaimed Danish thriller The Guilty is one of the best.

It focuses almost entirely on one man in a single location – a police emergency radio despatcher and a series of calls related to a kidnapping.

But it’s also about much more; the nature of truth and its alternating reality and the individual’s responsibility and capacity to understand and respect the truth.

These are the questions you are left to ponder following the film, but the experience of watching it is an enthralling and immersive one.

Asger Holm is part of a group of operators managing emergency calls received at a despatch office.

Immediately we realise he isn’t like the other operators – he is in uniform, aloof and preoccupied and doesn’t appear to have the required standard approach to dealing with the calls from drug addicts and mugging victims.

Through other snippets gained through personal phone calls we learn he has been restricted to desk duties, is due in court the next day on a work-related matter and has relationship problems.

Asger takes a call from a distraught woman who is pretending to speak to her young daughter. He quickly realises the woman has been kidnapped and is in danger.

Over the next 90 minutes, played out in real running time, Asger juggles information gained through calls with the woman, her husband, her young daughter, other police and his partner in dealing with the increasingly tense and desperate situation.

In doing so he comes to several realisations, including that his experience in the field doesn’t mean he is equipped for every situation and that reality isn’t always as it seems, manipulated by every person’s version of the truth.

Swedish actor Jakob Cedergren is front and centre throughout the film and its success hinges on the believability and vulnerability of his character.

His pitch-perfect performance is a balance of arrogance, professionalism, desperation, anger, sadness and frustration, played out in close-ups expertly matched to the emotional beats on screen.

Almost unbelievably, this is the first feature directed by Gustav Moller who also co-wrote the film with Emil Albertsen.

It would be interesting to know how the pair Determined which words to use and how they would be structured to best help the audience visualise the phone discussions.

The results are astounding, assisted by a series of great voice performances.

You’ll be sitting on the edge of your seat.