For those who are under the impression that movies are a form of escape, here is a film that will make you reevaluate. Dan Gilroy, who made himself known through his writing credits in THE FALL, THE BOURNE LEGACY, REAL STEEL, and countless others, has finally gotten his directorial debut on the big screen: NIGHTCRAWLER is a gritty story of the underbelly of crime journalism, a film that is sure to get under your skin.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays Louis Bloom, a cool and calculating young man in Los Angeles looking for work in unconventional ways. Lou is a go-getter, and sees everything as an opportunity -- the world is his job fair, and he'll be damned if smooth talking and a hard work ethic will not get him where he wants to be... and to hell with morals if they stand in his way. He finds his calling on the freeway, when a car crash -- and more importantly, the freelance camera crew that get the aftermath on tape -- catches his eye. It is clear that Lou is enamored by this display of "nightcrawling", and pretty soon, he has conned his way into possession of a police scanner and a video camera, and is chasing down crime scenes. Finally catching some good footage of a shooting, he brings it to the local news station to sell it, and finds his place in the news industry.
Lou's work begins to escalate. He names his self-started company "Video Production News" (VPN), and hires Rick (Riz Ahmed), an insecure but hopeful young man hoping for a break, to watch the car as he films. At first you will wonder if Lou is just in it for the passion of entrepreneurism, but his true, sociopathic intentions are revealed as he gradually becomes less and less passive in his attempts to get his footage.
From the very beginning, Lou makes you uncomfortable, from his overly self-selling nature right down to the ridiculously calculated way he chooses his words, but the sense of discomfort begins to grow as his rise to success is accompanied by uplifting, revelatory music... kudos to composer James Newton Howard for accentuating the disturbed atmosphere of the film by contrasting the audience's emotions so drastically. It is common for a film to give you a front row seat to a sociopath's world... it is not so common to try to fit you into his point of view. That is what makes this film so uncanny: there is a tug-of-war between the pull to relate with the main character and the strange revulsion that he brings to the screen.
This is a well-crafted commentary not only on how sociopaths fit into society, but also how news is treated in the media. While Lou is the most disturbing character in the film, his contact at the news station, Nina (Rene Russo), isn't too far behind him. She picks and chooses which footage to show, smiling excitedly as she watches murder and crash victims on the monitors. This is yet another unsettling aspect of the film: we watch Lou spinning his web, and yet we see similar characteristics between him and the woman who represents what we watch every day on our television screens.
The film is definitely a wakeup call, and I've got to hand it to Gilroy for handing the world a perfect topic of conversation in such a thrilling way. NIGHTCRAWLER is now playing at the Midtown Cinema... don't let this one pass you by!
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