Nightcrawler

Screenplay author (The Bourne Legacy) Dan Gilroy makes his directorial debut with Nightcrawler (he also wrote it) and it’s a demented doozy, a satirical look at sleazy journalism not far in tone (and subject matter) from David Fincher’s Gone Girl. Where Gone Girl also tackled sexual politics, Nightcrawler is a lower scale character study. But, what a study!

Jake Gyllenhaal plays a con man loner, Lou Bloom, a thief with no moral conscience, filled with the single-minded optimistic ideas and business jargon of self-help books. He’s first seen stealing and selling scrap metal in a dark, dreary Los Angeles. He soon stumbles on freelance cameramen, led by Bill Paxton, taking footage of a horrible car accident and decides to start his own similar “company”. Hiring a hapless and homeless, though more sane, assistant (Riz Ahmed), Bloom comes up with footage needed by a low-rated local TV station and its steely news director, Nina Romina, (played by Rene Russo) desperate for eyeball-grabbing gore.

Rene Russo’s a talent who’s been sadly underutilized in film (though it was fun to see her in the first two Thor films). In Nightcrawler she displays just the right balance of professionalism and poise with hunger for power and desperation. The film, though, belongs to Gyllenhaal, who lost thirty pounds for the role and plays it with unblinking, gaunt intensity. His mixture of remarkable self-confidence with morally unhinged business practices makes for a creepy persona. Bloom is incapable of normal human relationships; every interaction is only a means of somehow getting ahead. Jake Gyllenhaal played an opposite character in last year’s Prisoners and his acting range is noteworthy.

Robert Elswit’s cinematography is the other great character in the film. Known for moody films like Redbelt, There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton and Good Night and Good Luck, Elswit films the story almost entirely at night, where the flashing lights, explosions, police chases and video cameras look florescent in the darkness. In comparison, the brightly lit, 24-hour news station office becomes a sort of unholy sanctuary.

The film Nightcrawler has the most in common with Billy Wilder’s acidic Ace in the Hole (1951), with Kirk Douglas as Chuck Tatum, a degenerate reporter willing to change the news to make the news. It also echoes Paddy Chayefsky’s satirical Network and Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. Not a film for everyone, Nightcrawler has conviction, daring, suspense and a sly wit.

—Michael R. Neno, 2014 Nov 15