Nightcrawler

Nightcrawler

Film Review: 'Nightcrawler' (2014)It is interesting that when Rick (Riz Ahmed) nervily assesses his employer—“your problem is you don’t understand people,” he notes—Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), the employer in question, would only feign him a bug-eyed sympathetic look while coating a condescending grin. Rick has not a lick of sense how Bloom, at that point, has come to understand people at a most primal degree; more than what is ever imaginable to him. Roving the neon-lit avenues of nighttime Los Angeles, the diablo plights astride a crimson mustang and hunts for game, which to monomaniac opportunists like Bloom, as convenient as prey landing on his lap, is filming urban catastrophes, or as his struck client describes it (a dead-ended news director cunningly portrayed by Rene Russo) quite racist, “urban crime creeping into the suburbs.” There is no question or reason required by both the film and Bloom himself on leaping across moral, ethical and social boundaries. Until the very end, both the film and Bloom declines of having that.

This tightly focused perspective are roots of the enamour I have for stories about cunning sociopaths. They are clever and efficient, because disaffected by and completely recoils human emotion. They are irrevocable, too, and in the smartness of Dan Gilroy’s script-work, Nightcrawler sees for certain no change for Louis Bloom; no ‘in’ and no ‘out,’ an aspect which makes the film all the more compelling. “Get out of your head,” he later trades advice with Rick. “It’s a bad neighbourhood.” And indeed it is.

Nightcrawler, as a restrained touch in black humour and social commentary, is less riveting than when it focuses on a magnified portrait of a character who concerns himself with no boundaries of what he can or cannot do. Jake Gyllenhaal—always better in some way than in every previous starring film of his since David Fincher’s Zodiac—is terrific as Lou: blood-shot swollen eyes, stretched sub-human grin on his face, and gaunt to resemble a ghost walking within the periphery of human vision. He lives with extraordinary impersonality to wake up each morning and figure out “hmmm…what should I do this morning for ‘me’? What are some smart career choices should I make today?” My point being that people naturally wake up for reasons apart from his/her own—yet Lou is all ‘me.’ There is scarce information about this particular devil that roams nocturnal the City of Angels; only making it easier to assume that he is the type to take life as simple as the mere action of stepping up a ladder, with the singular goal of getting himself up top, no matter the how, the why and the what-it-means. Of all three, understand, he does not have.

He is the sociopathic extremity of the American Dream, starting small from dated worn-out camcorders to the fancier more current ones, taking small but certain steps, along the way dismissing fear as ‘false evidences appearing real’ (get it?), knowing at first the boundary, daring to leap beyond it in the next, exploring all viable career options and decisions for him to make. There are two scenes that resound with impactful reverb, attuned to such perspective of American dreaming and living: first, the scene in which Nina (Russo) orders airtime for footage that Lou took of a crime minutes before police came to the scene. Their transaction here is pivotal because it proffers both of them unholy ingresses, Lou fully aware of Nina’s desperation, Nina recognizing of Lou’s invaluable work. Nina finally seals the deal and complies with Lou’s terms—until whatever extent, the film does not reveal. Rene’s casting is spot-on, because Lou understands what is yearned by a failing sixty year-old career woman. Also, see the scene which Gilroy himself refers to as “the date from hell.”

Second, the diner scene, a momentous and terrifying change for Lou, is truly heart-pounding. It is his skip to a number of steps in the ladder, manipulating both his client and the law. Beside him is Rick, who, at first hesitant, resumes work with only the promise of flourishing words, a title specifically, that of being an “executive vice president.” True to this notion the film embraces, non-risk-takers have no true shot at success. This explains why both Lou and Nina’s subordinates are doomed to the background, to second place, of the latter (Kevin Rahm) finally playing his card when he notes that Nina is slowly becoming like Lou. Also explaining why folk like fellow-nightcrawler Joe Loder (Bill Paxton), whose mean piece of advice “if it bleeds, it leads” becomes an ultimate irony for him, earn themselves the real opportunities. Yet the truth remains that what they take are still risks, and Lou, unbeknownst to Loder, is the riskiest business of all.

If Nightcraweler plays a somewhat brittle commentary at violence and crime in mass media, it is also a terrific piece of obsessive noir, breathing an air of exacting ruggedness and latching on relentless unhinge that almost guarantees enamour from swooning cultists and discerning viewers both.


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NIGHTCRAWLER (2014)

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2014 / Drama, Thriller / US
Dir. Dan Gilroy / Scr. Dan Gilroy
Cast. Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed…

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“Who am I? I’m a hard-worker. I set high goals and I’ve been told that I’m persistent.”

~Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal)

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