When I started the movie, I felt something I hadn't felt in a while and that was "8 potential." It's basically when you start watching a movie and can guess how much you'll end up liking it (8/10) based on the early part (you can tell from style, dialogue, etc.). And honestly the early feeling doesn't deviate too much from the final result for me like 95% of the time I'd say. But I was pretty hooked on this from the first couple minutes when I realized what was going on: interesting premise, an amusing hook of a first call, noticeably good performance from good old Jake. Most of all, it got me thinking about that kind of job and all the little factors and bits of information you need to control or be able to adapt to on the fly to be good at it. Like, I was imagining what if it's someone's first day on a job like that. Maybe because I've found that I'm kind of terrible at dealing with high stress situations but I thought it was fascinating to watch someone be able to deal with situations like that and would have actually been so down for more of that PRO PROBLEM HANDLING SKILLS. Unfortunately, Joe unravels and starts acting pretty fucking unprofessional pretty fucking quickly. The "8 feeling" went away at the halfway point but it was the first time in a while I felt that excited about a beginning in a movie.
Still overall good and I really actually liked the one-location setting. There's a looming sense of dread because you only know what you're told and can't see anything for yourself. Especially for someone in that position who needs to manage and organize the information that comes in, send it to the right people, etc. The idea of that is more interesting to me than a cop being on the streets, even if it might seem like the street stuff is the "next level."
I did happen to see the letterboxd rating (2.9) before watching. Obviously I don't agree with them half the time but if anything, they tend to be higher than what I end up rating. So when I see a score below 3 on there for something I'm going to watch, I'm a bit curious. As I already mentioned I was feeling pretty high on it for the first half, so I was like "what's the big deal? does it turn to shit later or something?" After finishing it and wondering if I missed some blatant political commentary that got the letterboxd crowd fuming, I looked at the reviews and that's when I found out this was a FUCKING REMAKE of a 2018 Danish film. I felt DIRTY. I guess I'll go watch the original at some point now but hearing this was almost a shot-for-shot remake doesn't make me too excited to go watch right away.