Few would object to bumping into actor Jake Gyllenhaal at an odd hour of the night in Los Angeles. The same, however, cannot be said of Lou Bloom, the character Gyllenhaal plays in Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler. Hungry-eyed, greasy-haired and unnervingly manic, Lou has the air of someone who has wandered out of a horror story and into our real world. He’s bemused by the way of normal humans, but primed to take advantage of their frailties to further his own twisted agenda. Lou is the nightcrawler of the title. Initially, he’s a scrap metal scavenger whom everyone dismisses partly because he’s too small a cog in LA’s wheel and also because he’s positively creepy. Lou looks decrepit but speaks with the smooth patter of management professionals. It’s funny at first until you realise that educating himself with online courses was just the first baby step in Lou’s grand plan for world domination. [caption id=“attachment_1788855” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Courtesy: Facebook[/caption] One night, Lou discovers the world of freelance crime journalism. He witnesses an accident on the highway. Within seconds, there’s a man with a camera who films the rescue and the cameraman tells Lou how he’ll be selling the footage to a news channel. Spotting an opportunity, Lou decides he’s going to become a video journalist. He steals a bike, sells it and buys himself a handicam and a scanner to track police despatches. His first video catches news producer Nina’s (Rene Russo) eye and she encourages him to keep bringing such recordings. In no time, he has a protege, Richard (Riz Ahmed) who is a homeless man, desperate to make some cash. Armed with a sat nav, Richard and Lou trawl Los Angeles for crimes and misdemeanours that Lou can sell to the channel for which Nina works. So far, so groovy. You almost feel optimistic that someone as weird as Lou can actually make a living in the real world even though Lou’s complete lack of both empathy and respect for victims is disturbing. He thinks nothing of violating privacy and ethics in order to get his footage. Nina, the one person who could rap his knuckles, praises him for his single-mindedness and in the process, the power balance between Lou and Nina shifts slyly. Fixated upon creating sensationalist news that will grab eyeballs and feed paranoia, Nina is hooked to the gory footage that Lou provides her. She’s the junkie, Lou is her dealer. Nightcrawler is the story of Lou’s ascent and a vitriolic indictment of news media’s irresponsible behaviour. Nina and her channel don’t care that crime has actually gone down in LA in recent times. Their news reports suggest that it’s as dangerous simply because statistics show viewership soars when there are gory visuals and panic-inducing headlines. Working for an unremarkable channel and fearful of losing her job, Nina thinks nothing of putting forward incorrect news because the real story isn’t ‘sexy’ enough; journalistic ideals and ethics be damned. It’s when Lou walks into a crime scene before the police and decides he’s going to control how the case is solved — only because he wants to be the one with the best footage of the dramatic moment when the police get the bad guys — that everything tangles into a climax. Will the fact that Lou’s unethical actions bring him down? Or will he, with his ruthless ability to manipulate facts and people, be able to turn the Gordian knot into his own personal yo-yo? All the moving parts of Nightcrawler work in symphonic tandem. Gilroy’s script is taut (but for the slightly unconvincing end). The darkness in the film’s themes are strikingly captured in Robert Elswit’s cinematography. Matching the tempo of the story as it builds up to its chilling climax is James Newton Howard’s ominous-sounding background score. While Russo and Riz Ahmed are both supremely convincing in their roles as Lou’s two unwilling accomplices, Nightcrawler rests upon Gyllenhaal’s shoulders. Russo’s Nina and Ahmed’s Richard offer contrasts that highlight Lou’s weirdness. Richard’s circumstances are far more desperate than Lou’s, but he doesn’t lose sight of his basic, human decency the way Lou does. It’s a subtle reminder that Lou’s megalomanic is not a response to what life has dealt him. That’s just how Lou is as a person. Nina is just as morally vacant as Lou, but she lacks the feral quality that Gyllenhaal brings into Lou, which serves to make her weak when you desperately wish she was strong. Gyllenhaal is particularly gifted at playing misfits and heroes who are creepy because of their intensity, as his filmography shows. His performance in Nightcrawler is one of the highlights of his career so far. He’s pitch perfect as Lou, balancing ferocious nonchalance with the dark comedy that arises when Lou’s oddness encounters the normal world. Whether he’s making you laugh or leaving you appalled, Gyllenhaal never loses the air of unstable menace that makes Lou so fearsome to everyone around him. Nightcrawler is a thoroughly twisted version of the American dream. He is intelligent, hardworking, self-taught and intent upon success at any cost. This could be the recipe for a hero, but thanks to Gilroy’s script and direction, Nightcrawler is a crime thriller that punches anyone who watches the news in the gut again and again. If you’re a journalist, particularly for a television news channel, Nightcrawler should be in the list of essential viewing.
This could be the recipe for a hero, but thanks to Gilroy’s script and direction, Nightcrawler is a crime thriller that punches anyone who watches the news in the gut again and again.
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