Review #838: 'Nightcrawler' (2014)

Only four years before the release of this film, Jake Gyllenhaal was bronzed, maned and six-packed, and ended up watching Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010), a blockbuster based on a popular video game (always a bad idea), crash and burn both at the hands of the critics and in terms of box office receipts. Hollywood's attempt at sculpting this young actor we first saw as shifty and strange in Donnie Darko (2001) into something he was not, had failed miserably, and it seemed he was destined to fade and disappear. Four years later, it's difficult to imagine Gyllenhaal as anything other than the great actor he has become.

In Nightcrawler, he plays Lou Bloom. When we first meet him, he's trying to steel metal to sell for scrap, attacking a security guard when he is caught and stealing his watch. He sells what he steals, trying to cement a business relationship with the manager of a construction site, pitching his long-term ideas in Googled sales-speak. The guy isn't interested, maybe because he doesn't want to get into business with a criminal, or maybe it's because Lou is just so damn strange. He's clearly highly intelligent, observant and extremely driven, but with his bug-eyed glare, greasy hair and gaunt exterior, mixed with an unnerving politeness, you wouldn't want to be caught alone in a room with the creep.

Driving home disappointed but not deterred, he comes across police sirens and a grisly auto-mobile accident. It's not the blood and guts he's interested in seeing, but the collections of 'nightcrawlers' who emerge out of the night, cameras swung onto their soldiers, filming anything they can of the grim wreckage. Ever curious, Lou questions one of them, Joe (Bill Paxton), who explains the in's and out's of what they do before darting off to sell what they have to the highest-bidding TV station. Purchasing a video camera, Lou gives it a try. He employs Rick (Riz Ahmed) to listen to police scanners and direct him to the pay-checks, and forms a professional relationship with 'vampire shift' news director Nina (Rene Russo), who gets first dibs on any footage Lou shoots throughout the night.

First time director Dan Gilroy, Russo's husband and writer of forgotten Emilio Estevez vehicle Freejack (1992) and the more recent The Bourne Legacy (2012), manages to keep the film a right mix of black comedy, neon-lit thriller, and biting satire. It's also a film about L.A., a city that, in Lou's eyes especially, only comes alive at night, where every corner could lead to another shocking story to spark fear into morning viewers, and bumping Lou up the corporate ladder in the process. Things are pushed to the extreme in Nightcrawler, but it's alarming to realise that we are bombarded with graphic images in various media outlets every day, but for what reason? Is it part of a bigger picture aimed at controlling a terrified and increasingly paranoid audience, or is it simply because, deep down, we want to see them?

As Lou's thirst for recognition, respect and financial success becomes increasingly unquenchable, he begins to manipulate things for his own gain. From the opening scene where he may or may not have killed a man, we simply don't know what he is capable of. He first moves a corpse so he can get a better angle when he arrives at a car crash before the police, and things spiral outward from there. Whether it's Gyllenhaal's stunning performance (Oscar hang your head in shame) or the idea of if we are to exist in an evil world, then why not excel in it, I wanted this slimy opportunist, who represents everything I hate, to succeed. It loses it's grit and focus towards the end, but Nightcrawler is an accomplished debut, managing to be fun, repulsive and both beautiful and ugly to look at.


Directed by: Dan Gilroy
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed, Bill Paxton
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie