Okay, I want to give Antoine Fuqua another chance, after how baffling his last production turned out. And as easy as it is to completely write this off as unnecessary because it’s an American remake of a European film (and of a film that I have reviewed previously), I can actually see the merit in remaking this specific feature.
The whole point of the original film was its sound design, with the plot revolving around the lead character being on the phone for the entire run time, so having all that sound be in a language I speak naturally means I can focus more on hearing that sound design rather than divvying up time between that and reading it (yeah, yeah, “lazy Westerners hate subtitles”, so cry the people being a lot more ableist than they realise; save the elitism for another time, 'kay?). There’s also how (and this is admittedly information I didn’t know about when I reviewed the original) the whole idea for this story came from director/co-writer Gustav Möller watching a YouTube video recording of a 911 call. So it’s basically being re-translated back into where it first came from; this could legitimately have a chance at working.
Now, while the opening shot of Los Angeles in the midst of a raging wildfire initially gave me worry that this was on the wrong footing, Fuqua and Nic Pizzolatto waste no time in showing that they get the point of the original. We’re still stuck right alongside the main character, here played by Jake Gyllenhaal, as he mans the phone at a 911 emergency response centre, when he gets a call from a kidnapped woman (Riley Keough). We still never leave his side (save for a brief scene following an outside police car) and, for a good 80+ minutes, we’re still watching a man slowly break down from guilt and stress as he tries to save a life. Hell, even the deviations add a bit to the larger thematic textures, since the backdrop of the wildfire and how the clouds of smoke are literally affecting the visibility of emergency services… yeah, that fits right in.
However, even though it’s an easy translation as far as visual and aural aesthetics, it’s a whole different story in terms of the cultural translation. Having the main character be a police officer, who literally tells someone that “the police are protectors”, hits differently with an American cultural background. Without even getting into the different sides of the issue, it’s a narrow line to walk in order to make this stick, especially since the driving event in the main character’s backstory (the wrongful shooting of a teenager) is completely intact in the remake. I won’t say that it does perfectly in maintaining an awareness of the optics of the situation, but I also won’t say that it comes across as overly defensive or willing to let bastard cops off the hook. Far bloody from it, regardless of the version.
What I will say, and I don’t know whether this is because of me already being familiar with this material or if it is indeed because of the English-language delivery of it this time around, is that this still hits hard in all the same ways that the original does. Gyllenhaal brings his increasingly unhinged ways to the role and create a truly gripping performance that works as the nucleus for the entire production, and Riley Keough (who is essentially the jam band of American actors: No two shows the same) weaves through every beat of her own character expertly, really driving home how tragic the events leading up to that initial call truly are. All the other actors fit their roles well, for the brief audio snippets they end up being, and the cinematography and editing are more than sufficient in making the same room engaging enough to stick with for an entire film.
At the end of the day, I get the annoyance at Americanised remakes; audiences should be able to see everything the cinematic world has to offer without it being homogenised to fit into the national mould. But with a film this singularly devoted to its sound scape to deliver the bulk of its engagement, it has more reason than most to be given this treatment. I would rank this about the same as the original film, since it succeeds for all the same reasons that one did, just that it was easier to fully immerse myself in its sounds without needing them translated in real-time. It can go down as a matter of personal preference, but no matter what you ultimately end up doing (watch one before the other, only watch one, not watch either, etc.), there’s only one thing I would ask: Try not to be a dick to those who choose differently.
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