The Guilty

Year: 2021

Duration: 90 min

Extremely stressed LAPD officer Joe Baylor is working the night shift at a 911 call center, which is overwhelmed with calls relating to a large wildfire in the Hollywood Hills. He is awaiting a hearing for an unspecified incident that occurred on duty eight months ago but hopes to return to his beat afterwards. Joe fields the emergency phone calls while being hounded by a Los Angeles Times reporter asking for a statement about the hearing. Emily Lighton calls, a young woman who cannot talk freely, and Joe deduces she has been kidnapped and is in a vehicle with her abductor. Learning they are in a white van on the freeway, the driver catches on and Emily has to hang up before providing any further details. Joe relays the information to the CHP, but they are unable to locate the van without more info. He then calls Emily's home phone number, speaking to her young daughter Abby. She tells him her mom was taken by her ex-husband Henry Fisher. Getting Henry's phone number from Abby, he uses it to get the van's license plate number. Relaying the plate number to the CHP, he then sends a LAPD patrol car to check on Abby and her baby brother Oliver. He also requests a search of Henry's apartment, but is denied due to the lack of a warrant. Joe calls his estranged wife Jess, from whom he has been separated for six months, asking to speak to their daughter Paige, who is asleep. Jess will not agree to come to the hearing and asks Joe to stop calling. He then calls Henry, who has a record of assault, tells him he knows Emily is with him, demands to know where they are headed, but Henry hangs up. Next, Joe calls his ex-partner Rick, who is off-duty, and asks him to check Henry's house. Rick, meant to provide witness testimony at Joe's hearing, expresses concern that things won't go their way as federal agents have been talking to him. Joe receives a panicked call from Abby and instructs her to open the door for two LAPD officers performing a wellness check. They see Abby has blood on her hands and that her brother Oliver - who she said was "sleeping" - is either gravely injured or dead. Rick breaks into Henry's apartment, finding piles of letters and documents. Joe asks him to find information that can help them deduce where Henry is going. Then he calls Emily and convinces her to pull the handbrake, but it fails to crash the van. He calls her back and learns that she is in the back of the van. She tells Joe that she believed Oliver had "snakes in his stomach" and that she "took them out". When Henry stops the van and tries to remove Emily from the back, she hits him with a brick and runs away. Rick then calls Joe back and says he found papers in Henry's apartment relating to a psychiatric treatment facility in San Bernardino, where Emily had been a patient. Joe calls Henry, who was taking Emily back to the facility; she had been off her medication for weeks because they could not afford them. When asked why he didn't call the police when Emily hurt Oliver; Henry says he doesn't trust the system as no one was willing to help them before. Joe asks where Emily went, but Henry doesn't know. Emily calls Joe back from an overpass, implying she is preparing to jump to her death, having realized what she did. He directs the CHP to her location as he talks her down from the bridge. To distract her, Joe reveals that he killed a man while on active duty; when Emily asks why, he says he doesn't know but that he was angry and wanted to punish the man for hurting someone. She asks if it was "snakes", and he agrees. Profoundly distraught, Joe tells Emily that her family still loves her and needs her and that he promised Abby she would come home. As officers arrive, Emily says she is "gonna go be with Oliver" and hangs up. Joe thinks she has jumped, but the CHP calls to tell him they got her to come down safely. He also learns that Oliver is alive and in the ICU at the hospital. In the restroom, Joe vomits. He calls Rick, asking him to recant his earlier story and tell the truth on the witness stand even though it means a sentence of years in prison. Joe then calls the L.A. Times, informing the reporter he intends to plead guilty to manslaughter at the trial.

Genre: Action   Crime   Drama   Thriller