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| A hip, artsy poster for Dan Gilroy's Nightcrawler |
Nightcrawler is the much talked about directing debut of writer/director Dan Gilroy (The Bourne Legacy (2012)), a dark Los Angeles-set thriller character piece with some implicit societal and media-directed critique.
Lou Bloom is a young, ambitious entrepreneur, who one night stumbles upon the world of crime and accident video capturing, which he gathers is a profitable line of business and thus enters with keen enthusiasm and a ruthless eye for business.
Jake Gyllenhaal as the title nightcrawler [a term used in the film for these freelance video-recorders] heightens the film with a performance that is electric and demands attention. He lost 20 pounds for the role, making him appear eerily skeletal, and the fine actor hasn't been this good since Donnie Darko (2001). The cool-to-the-core sociopath that he portrays has some of the charm of Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho (2000), although that film was less successful with its source material (Bret Easton Ellis' great novel) and the character of Bloom also never becomes an actively misanthropic psychopathic killer as Bateman did, though one could certainly see him spiral out of control. Bloom is manipulative and lacks an ethical or moral compass; he also stands out as a capitalist shark version of the American dream, who from a certain advantageous angle may appear merely 'driven' and 'ambitious'.
Nightcrawler is disquieting, because Bloom is obviously so good at what he does; commanding people's attention and getting his agenda heard and pushed through, with impunity: He grows through determination and an undeniable rhetorical talent, - as well as an absence of any moral restraints, making him a potentially highly dangerous individual. Gilroy has written Bloom's venture into this guerrilla video-capture world so that his criminal behavior is laid bare up-front, but leaves it up to us to sanction this character flaw, saddled up with Gyllenhaal's charismatic performance. Bloom teams up with an easy subject of his manipulation, a desperate homeless man played terrifically by Riz Ahmed (The Road to Guantanomo (2006)).
Nothing in Nightcrawler seems exaggerated beyond realism, which also raises its level of suspense. In our digital, over-mediated world of today, we may think as we watch the film; what is to say that something like this isn't happening in our city right now?
The troubling success of Bloom comes from his relation to a TV channel executive producer played by Gilroy's real-life wife Rene Russo (In the Line of Fire (1993)) in what nevertheless seems a brilliant piece of casting. Russo has 'grown' one of those Hollywood-actress faces with obvious signs of unnatural meddling with nature that suits this character perfectly, - and, more importantly, she is still an excellent and sexy actress. Bill Paxton (Aliens (1986)) is also great as a tech-enthused competitor in some of Nightcrawler's many darkly amusing scenes.
The media critique of Nightcrawler may shortly remind folks of Network (1976), however, this film doesn't serve its point nearly as polemically as was done in the 1970's movie, as the focus lies on the character of Bloom primarily.
Nightcrawler becomes wildly exciting, as things invariably escalate. It is an excellent production, an adult story that creeps on you for all of its 117 minutes and stays there for a good while afterwards.
Cost: 8.5 mil. $
Box office: 50.3 mil. $
= Huge hit
[Opening 2nd in the US behind the horror flick Ouija (2014), Nightcrawler is sneaking its result up at domestic and global box office.]
What do you think of Nightcrawler?
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