Stealing and news gathering are two faces of the dime for Los Angeles denizen Louis Bloom. Both involve an act of snatching from those unwilling to give, and both require Louis to tap into his endless reserves of patience and single-mindedness. Louis (Jake Gyllenhaal) wants to work his way to the very top of the American Dream from the margins of society where he has been forced to squander his talents as a small-time thief. So what if he needs to harvest a few nightmares in the process?
Equipped with a camera and a car and accompanied by assistant Rick (Riz Ahmed), Louis trawls the streets of Los Angeles at night in search of crime and accident reports that will trump the competition (represented by Bill Paxton’s beat veteran). Louis’s lack of delicacy in shoving his equipment into the faces of the dying or dead and his unerring sense of what sells endears him to local television station chief Nina (Rene Russo), who will put anything on air to boost poor ratings. The die is cast for a deliciously cynical satire of a culture addicted to sensationalism and the myth of individual progress.
A worthy successor to 'Network'
The morally hollow but irresistible sociopath in screenwriter Dan Gilroy’s accomplished debut evokes memories of similar social rejects who have slithered across the screen over the years, while Gilroy's elegant skewering of media sensationalism updates Network and To Die For. Indeed, Nina might even be an older version of Network’s Diana, and the local TV channel, with its dependence on sensation-mongering crime reports, is the kind of place Diana might have ended up at if she stuck around in the profession long enough.
Louis too proves to be a worthy successor to Nicole Kidman’s diabolical weather girl from To Die For. Jake Gyllenhaal got his big break as a suburban weirdo in Donnie Darko. In Nightcrawler, he plays his madness straight, dressing up his amoral beliefs as self-help advice picked up from the internet. Louis earnestly lectures Rick in the kind of language usually spouted by management gurus who are trying to pass off cotton as silk.
The morbid humour, however, never slips into facile moralising. Nightcrawler says a lot about unemployment, Los Angeles, and the media with little – it’s a small, compact, tightly written picture, shot in richly expressionist tones by Robert Elswit and guided by an exquisitely judged lead performance. Gyllenhaal’s controlled insanity is perfectly expressed by his gaunt frame (the actor lost close to ten kilos for the part), which makes his eyes bulge uncannily out of his sepulchral face. With his homegrown success mantras, survival skills and absence of a distracting conscience, Louis has the beginnings of a great career in journalism. While Gyllenhaal, who co-produced the movie, and proved his talent in such films as Brokeback Mountain and Prisoners, displays the beginnings of a marvellous run in the movies.
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Equipped with a camera and a car and accompanied by assistant Rick (Riz Ahmed), Louis trawls the streets of Los Angeles at night in search of crime and accident reports that will trump the competition (represented by Bill Paxton’s beat veteran). Louis’s lack of delicacy in shoving his equipment into the faces of the dying or dead and his unerring sense of what sells endears him to local television station chief Nina (Rene Russo), who will put anything on air to boost poor ratings. The die is cast for a deliciously cynical satire of a culture addicted to sensationalism and the myth of individual progress.
A worthy successor to 'Network'
The morally hollow but irresistible sociopath in screenwriter Dan Gilroy’s accomplished debut evokes memories of similar social rejects who have slithered across the screen over the years, while Gilroy's elegant skewering of media sensationalism updates Network and To Die For. Indeed, Nina might even be an older version of Network’s Diana, and the local TV channel, with its dependence on sensation-mongering crime reports, is the kind of place Diana might have ended up at if she stuck around in the profession long enough.
Louis too proves to be a worthy successor to Nicole Kidman’s diabolical weather girl from To Die For. Jake Gyllenhaal got his big break as a suburban weirdo in Donnie Darko. In Nightcrawler, he plays his madness straight, dressing up his amoral beliefs as self-help advice picked up from the internet. Louis earnestly lectures Rick in the kind of language usually spouted by management gurus who are trying to pass off cotton as silk.
The morbid humour, however, never slips into facile moralising. Nightcrawler says a lot about unemployment, Los Angeles, and the media with little – it’s a small, compact, tightly written picture, shot in richly expressionist tones by Robert Elswit and guided by an exquisitely judged lead performance. Gyllenhaal’s controlled insanity is perfectly expressed by his gaunt frame (the actor lost close to ten kilos for the part), which makes his eyes bulge uncannily out of his sepulchral face. With his homegrown success mantras, survival skills and absence of a distracting conscience, Louis has the beginnings of a great career in journalism. While Gyllenhaal, who co-produced the movie, and proved his talent in such films as Brokeback Mountain and Prisoners, displays the beginnings of a marvellous run in the movies.