OK, I’m busted. Last week I implied that the movies shown on Netflix are invariably mediocre, but within days The Forgiven (2021) proved me wrong. It takes place at a luxury residence on the fringe of the Sahara Desert — the movie was shot on location — where a bunch of debauched Westerners are throwing a wild party. Fiennes plays David Henninger, a cynical alcoholic who accidentally hits and kills an impoverished Moroccan boy while driving drunk to the party with his long-suffering wife Jo, played by Jessica Chastain.

My neighbor Swamp Rabbit listened and said, “You shoulda wrote that the Netflix original movies are always mediocre. The Forgiven came out years ago in theaters. It wasn’t produced by the Netflix peeps. Where you been?”

Anyway, the plot hinges on whether Henninger, a privileged character, will face consequences for killing the boy. and things begin to look bad for him when the boy’s father turns up at the party house seeking justice. What follows is Henninger passing through various stages of denial on his way to concluding he’s unworthy of forgiveness for the hit-and-run and, in general, for being a lifelong bad guy.

“I saw the movie,” Swamp Rabbit said. “Fiennes plays a selfish creep who’s sick of himself. He’s good at that. The other peeps at the party are creeps too but everybody’s funny in a snarky way, don’t you think?”

Nobody’s laughing when Henninger is pressured by the angry, grieving father to journey deep into the desert for the boy’s funeral. It’s clear early on that he’s a stand-in for rich people everywhere who exploit the poor and ignore their misery. But he becomes a vehicle for the film’s guilt/redemption theme. He grows a conscience.

Swamp Rabbit cackled. “Take a look at the scumbags who run this country. Ain’t no such thing as conscience. No wonder that movie wasn’t a hit.”

I told him that only psychopaths don’t have a conscience. That guilt/redemption is a universal, timeless theme. That The Forgiven is clunky in spots but substantial, a smart story about the mystery of human nature. The sort of story Graham Greene or Paul Bowles might write. Or Albert Camus, maybe.

“Yeah, but them guys are dead,” Swamp Rabbit said. “The only mystery is how a pale, beautiful redhead like Jessica Chastain could hang out in the desert sun for so long without getting burned to a crisp. She must have slathered on a gallon of sunblock.”