Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a
self-made man, just don't ask him how many people he stepped on during his way
there. He has a speech prepared for why you should make him your newest
employee, the problem is Louis forgets how calculating every little word is
that falls out of his mouth. Desperate for any kind of inroads to a career,
Louis discovers one by chance on the side of the road.
A car-fire draws his attention, as
well as the attentions of a couple of stringers eager to get footage of an
accident on the highway. Stringers are freelance camera crews who
film carjackings, crashes, fires, murders, drug crimes and other gruesome
stories, then sell the footage to local news stations. As one veteran
nightcrawler puts it, "if it bleeds, it leads." Louis scrimps, swipes
and steals whatever he can get his hands on to purchase a camera to break into
the field. Muscling into nightcrawling proves difficult, but once Louis puts his
mind to something, nothing can stop him.
Essential to Louis's evolution as a
morally reprehensible "journalist" is KWLA news director Nina (Rene
Russo). Nina may have her qualms about the material Louis brings in, but with a
contract expiring soon, she's not prioritizing moral concerns over ratings.
Nina aged out of being an anchorwoman and her tenuous grasp on her position means
not saying no to some of the more graphic footage Louis pedals.
There are quite a few targets in the
sights of writer/director Dan Gilroy: contemporary employment issues, evidenced
by the perverse exploitation of intern Rick (Rick Garcia), but the real meat of
the film is the horrifically inhuman trade where human suffering is
calculated into a price tag and then cut into a check each morning. Like other recent profiles in
ambitious men (There Will Be Blood, The Social Network), Nightcrawler
takes a particularly unlikable man and watches him ascend the corporate ladder.
Louis Bloom is a character so unique
you can't take your eyes off of
him, even when he is at his most repellent. Beneath the meticulously composed
image that Louis offers wholesale to whoever will listen lies a sociopath. Gyllenhaal
dives in, unafraid of distastefully crossing the line of observing a story and
manipulating it for more cash, among other incidents. Even Daniel Plainview would shy away from
blackmailing a coworker into a sexual relationship. Jake Gyllenhaal likely faces an uphill road for any kind of awards play because of the unseemly nature of his character.
Adding to the lure of this thriller is the excellent
lensing by Robert Elswit. The academy award winner captures Los Angeles at its
most vicious. There's a lot of horrors going on in the underbelly of Los Angeles and Louis can cash in on all of them. Accompanying the excellent
cinematography is James Newton Howard's score which cues a bizarre heroic theme
that plays through Louis's head, but it's the ominous blare that lingers in the
air that tells the story.
Satire is a tough sell these days, but when a writer
can mine some dark laughs out of the material it avoids feeling like medicine. Nightcrawler isn't solely about the
fundamentally flawed nature of 21st news coverage, but it lands more than its
share of punches in that regard. Thrillers like this are hard to come by, movie lovers would be doing themselves a disservice by missing out on it.