Nightcrawler (A- or 3.5/4 stars)
Dan Gilroy's crime thriller 'Nightcrawler' stars Jake Gyllenhaal as sociopathic Louis Bloom, who scratches out a living stealing & selling scrap metal in L.A.. But all that changes for Lou one day as he happens upon a roadside accident & notices a freelance video 'stringer', Joe (Bill Paxton), filming it. When Lou asks him what he's doing, Joe tells him he's recording the gruesome event for local TV news. Lou is - to say the least - fascinated. He prowls the gritty streets of L.A. at night in his turbo-charged Dodge Challenger, buys a cheap camera, buys a police scanner, & tries "nightcrawling" for himself. His 1st attempts fail but, after finally nabbing some exclusive footage, he sells it to Nina Romina (Rene Russo), the desperate-for-breaking news graveyard-shift TV director of L.A.'s lowest rated station.
They form a bizarre I-do-for-you, you-do-for-me relationship & Lou becomes increasingly daring in his nightcrawling methods, ignoring ethics & even breaking the law, to 'get the shot'. He hires a clueless young assistant, Rick (Riz Ahmed), & is soon challenging Joe (Paxton) for the position of top dog nightcrawler. But Louis' unflappable obsession for nightcrawling & his obsession with bettering his position in life push him into darker territory. And instead of remaining merely a passive bystander with a camera, Lou brazenly begins to stage his own roadside carnage & re-arrange crime scenes ... until he stumbles onto an actual home invasion. Lives become endangered, the police get involved, & crazy Lou is forced to keep his calm amid the mayhem he's created. But can he?
What a cool, creepy little thriller this wound up being. Written & directed by Gilroy, 'Nightcrawler' provides quite the scathing social media satire, while also providing a character study of a sociopath, & showing us some pretty nifty action set pieces; ripe with L.A.'s forbidden nocturnal events, rain-slickened streets, tricked-out cars, neon lights, & cameras. Cinematographer Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood, Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol) perfectly captures the dark, seedy, terrifying violence in the City of Angels. And James Newton Howard provides a pulsating musical score; best used during the tension-filled conclusion.
As for Jake Gyllenhaal - well, he's electrifying. Gaunt, strange, unsettling, & wildly intense ... watching him play pathological Lou Bloom is something to behold. Jake's eyes dart from the sockets like daggers, his false smile made me uncomfortable, and YET ... I kinda sorta admired this insanely driven character for his all-out self-empowering, yet delusionary approach to success (however ethically/morally wrong it surely is). There's something hypnotic about watching Lou's nasty power of persuasion at work. It was nice to see Bill Paxton again, who voices the film's memorable newsroom adage, "if it bleeds, it leads". And I loved seeing Rene Russo back in a top-notch film. Lou allows her Nina to realize that - beneath her ethically-sound facade - she's as hellbent & desperate for success as he is.
'Nightcrawler' is a pretty dark, cynical movie. Marketed as a fun thriller, it's more of an artsy character piece ... so it won't be for everyone. The violence may not sit well with some, as well. But I certainly dug this movie. One of my favorite scenes occurs during a live newscast when Nina prods the anchors (via earpiece) to ramp up the terror of Lou's footage. Now, 'Nightcrawler' isn't perfect. Parts of it "crawl". And though I enjoyed Riz Ahmed as Lou's nervous apprentice, I thought his character felt like a writer's construct instead of a real person. But overall, I think it's one of the better films I've seen this year; a film that tells a scathing commentary about the exploitation of violence on cutthroat TV news stations to garner ratings, & a film that offers us one hell of a fascinating anti-hero in Lou Bloom.
They form a bizarre I-do-for-you, you-do-for-me relationship & Lou becomes increasingly daring in his nightcrawling methods, ignoring ethics & even breaking the law, to 'get the shot'. He hires a clueless young assistant, Rick (Riz Ahmed), & is soon challenging Joe (Paxton) for the position of top dog nightcrawler. But Louis' unflappable obsession for nightcrawling & his obsession with bettering his position in life push him into darker territory. And instead of remaining merely a passive bystander with a camera, Lou brazenly begins to stage his own roadside carnage & re-arrange crime scenes ... until he stumbles onto an actual home invasion. Lives become endangered, the police get involved, & crazy Lou is forced to keep his calm amid the mayhem he's created. But can he?
What a cool, creepy little thriller this wound up being. Written & directed by Gilroy, 'Nightcrawler' provides quite the scathing social media satire, while also providing a character study of a sociopath, & showing us some pretty nifty action set pieces; ripe with L.A.'s forbidden nocturnal events, rain-slickened streets, tricked-out cars, neon lights, & cameras. Cinematographer Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood, Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol) perfectly captures the dark, seedy, terrifying violence in the City of Angels. And James Newton Howard provides a pulsating musical score; best used during the tension-filled conclusion.
As for Jake Gyllenhaal - well, he's electrifying. Gaunt, strange, unsettling, & wildly intense ... watching him play pathological Lou Bloom is something to behold. Jake's eyes dart from the sockets like daggers, his false smile made me uncomfortable, and YET ... I kinda sorta admired this insanely driven character for his all-out self-empowering, yet delusionary approach to success (however ethically/morally wrong it surely is). There's something hypnotic about watching Lou's nasty power of persuasion at work. It was nice to see Bill Paxton again, who voices the film's memorable newsroom adage, "if it bleeds, it leads". And I loved seeing Rene Russo back in a top-notch film. Lou allows her Nina to realize that - beneath her ethically-sound facade - she's as hellbent & desperate for success as he is.
'Nightcrawler' is a pretty dark, cynical movie. Marketed as a fun thriller, it's more of an artsy character piece ... so it won't be for everyone. The violence may not sit well with some, as well. But I certainly dug this movie. One of my favorite scenes occurs during a live newscast when Nina prods the anchors (via earpiece) to ramp up the terror of Lou's footage. Now, 'Nightcrawler' isn't perfect. Parts of it "crawl". And though I enjoyed Riz Ahmed as Lou's nervous apprentice, I thought his character felt like a writer's construct instead of a real person. But overall, I think it's one of the better films I've seen this year; a film that tells a scathing commentary about the exploitation of violence on cutthroat TV news stations to garner ratings, & a film that offers us one hell of a fascinating anti-hero in Lou Bloom.