Jake Gyllenhaal’s Nightcrawler is a deceptively disturbing look at the worst of US tabloid TV
MOVIE review: Jake Gyllenhaal channels the best of Robert De Niro in the dark and disturbing Nightcrawler.
Nightcrawler (MA15+)
Director : Dan Gilroy (feature debut)
Starring : Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Bill Paxton, Riz Ahmed.
Rating : 4 stars
When it comes to Nightcrawler, it is best to be both alert and alarmed.
Each state of mind will come in very handy when processing the not-so-secret motives of its chilling lead character, an unhealthily driven young man named Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal).
Lou may not be the brightest light bulb around. But he is the most wired. Every waking moment is spent figuring out how to get ahead.
Lou has read a lot of self-help manuals. Actually, he has misread most of them. His moral compass is spinning like a roulette wheel.
However, when Lou commits himself to a career in TV news, morals just don’t matter anymore.
Lou has started his own business. He is a crime-scene cameraman for hire. Every night, he sits glued to a police scanner, listening for word of any calamity that has just occurred on the streets of Los Angeles.
Car accidents are in plentiful supply. But only fatalities and serious injuries have a chance of selling.
Stabbings and shootings are hot-ticket items, particularly if Lou can land gruesome vision that his rivals cannot.
Lou’s best customer is Nina (Rene Russo), the veteran producer of a low-rating 6am bulletin. She was the one who brought the old news adage “if it bleeds, it leads” to Lou’s attention.
Lou interprets this hoary throwaway phrase as a work order. Soon enough, whenever blood is spilled in LA, Lou is first on the scene.
His shooting style is up close and impersonal. Lou will point his camera at anything. His specialty is making viewers look at stuff they should be looking away from.
Though Nightcrawler is squarely taking aim at the worst inclinations of US tabloid television - Nina describes her bulletin as “a screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut” - it is the eerily centred performance of Gyllenhaal that draws and holds all focus.
With a smile always on his dial and a work ethic that never lets up, Lou seems like the kind of guy that would do anything for anybody.
Gyllenhaal reads him differently, and gradually gets us thinking the same way: Lou is really the kind of guy who would do anything to anybody.
The key reference point for Gyllenhaal’s work here is Robert DeNiro in his method-as-madness prime.
With his sunken features (Gyllenhaal dropped a stack of weight for the role), boundless reserves of nervous energy, and the misplaced conviction that he is always in the right, Lou Bloom shares much in common with DeNiro’s famously freaky man-monsters Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver) and Rupert Pupkin (The King of Comedy).
If that isn’t recommendation enough, the atmospheric after-dark cinematography of Robert Elswit (a regular collaborator of filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson) and a deceptively disturbing screenplay only heighten the lasting impact achieved by Nightcrawler.
Originally published as Jake Gyllenhaal’s Nightcrawler is a deceptively disturbing look at the worst of US tabloid TV