Meet Lou Bloom, an unemployed thirty-something with a penchant for stealing shiny things, and enough charisma and self-belief to power the whole of Los Angeles.
After stumbling across a late night crime scene he becomes enthralled by the excitement and immediacy of watching the Nightcrawlers at work — seeing them get in, get the shot, and get out.
It becomes obvious that in order to be great at this job you need to park your emotion at the door and stop looking at victims of crime as real people but instead as a meal ticket, which we soon learn is no big deal for our wide-eyed sociopath. He was made for this job — and so, off he goes into the night on his quest for breaking news with his home-movie camcorder, and a hapless intern…
In this age of austerity, recession, and job losses you can’t help but empathise with Gyllenhaal’s Bloom — infact, you can’t help but admire him, his resilience, his determination, and his bravery. He is a man willing to do whatever it takes to find his foothold in a world that has, until now, stretched and worn useless thin around him.
Speaking of Gyllenhaal, he is exquisite as cinema’s latest (and greatest) anti-hero. A midnight misfit with misinformed motives, He’s unrelenting, unhinged and unstable and the feeling that he may switch into something quite dark and sinister is always there, bleeding through the screen. But his witty salesman-esque approach to dialogue balances out that creepy edge endearing him to us more with every scene.
Sharp writing made for an interesting character base but the spellbinding performance from Jake Gyllenhaal provides the layers to rival the Travis Bickles, the Alex DeLarges and the D-Fens of the movie world. Lou Bloom is discomfort personified, haunting the screen with his giant blue eyes suspended on a gaunt face that is both alluring and terrifying. This movie belongs to him, he is the beating heart, and pumping blood of this diamond in the rough.
Nightcrawler, quite fittingly, is a visual feast serving up plenty of wide-angle sweeps of the LA skyline to sink your teeth into, as well as uncomfortable up-close-and-personal shots of the saturated underbelly of the crime world. In short, the cinematography is stunning. And the direction is just as good, with one scene in particular that details the technical breakdowns of constructing and presenting live news using Bloom’s explosive, and morally questionable, footage that would be worthy of wearing out the tape for rewinding it so much — it gives us a no holds barred insight into the seedy world of breaking news that leaves you not knowing whether to shudder or applause.
Originality is almost an impossible feat to achieve in the seen-it-all-before age of cinema, but Nightcrawler might have just achieved it. It has the leading man, the production, and the screenplay to rival any Hollywood blockbuster but it is it’s charm, modesty, and the ‘je ne sais quoi’ quality that will lifts it into a category of it’s very own.
I just wish I could watch it with fresh eyes all over again…
The Reel World 