Every week we’re bringing you recommendations for great movies or TV shows streaming on Netflix. This week’s selection is…
“NIghtcrawler” (7 out of 10) – Written and directed by Dan Gilroy, Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Bill Paxton, Riz Ahmed, and Rene Russo; Run time: 117 minutes; Rated R.
Lou Bloom (Gyllenhaal) is down on his luck and living in Los Angeles, resorting to stealing from construction sites in order to stay afloat. After a scuffle with a security guard Lou negotiates the price of his stolen goods at a scrap yard and attempts to leverage the sale into a legitimate job but is turned down because of his obvious and immediate criminal history.
Later Lou witnesses the aftermath of a car crash and discovers that there is an industry in filming breaking news and selling it to local news stations so he steals a high end bicycle and trades it at a pawn shop for a video camera and police scanner, thus begins his career as a “stringer,” a freelance cameraman and ambulance chaser. Stingers follow emerging crimes, disasters, and bloody travesties of all kinds in order to obtain firsthand footage that can be sold to local news stations.
Bloom’s first break is an apparent carjacking wherein the victim is gravely injured. He arrives on the scene and pushes in close in order to get a good angle, this gets him ejected from the crime scene but not before getting footage that he sells for $250.
As the story progresses Lou enlists the help of an assistant, Rick (Ahmed), who acts as navigator and backup cameraman for $30 a night. Despite an early hit, Bloom struggles to get another, competition among stingers is heavy and Bloom’s tactics consistently escalate in order to attain the footage he needs. What begins as mere reckless driving (in the context of the storey) en route to a scene, quickly becomes moving bodies to get better lighting, entering crime scenes, and in one case, being the direct cause of an accident.
What’s scary about the character, or rather, Gyllenhaal’s performance which is spectacular, is not only that you see his behavior and realize that there are people in your life like that, but that you can also sympathize with his position and by proxy, his actions.
Bloom is a man backed into a corner who sees an opportunity to get out and takes it, there’s something romantic about that, even if he leaves a few wrecked lives and a couple of bodies in his wake, that’s the American dream damn it.
There’s no question about it though, Louis Bloom’s moral compass points true north only on occasion that there is a stack of money along the way. Yet somehow you find yourself rooting for him, mumbling thinks like ‘Get out of the house before you get caught!’ instead of ‘I sure hope the police catch this twisted sonofabitch.’
Bloom’s actions and speech patterns aren’t the only ingredients in the crazy stew, Gyllenhaal looks cracked. He reportedly lost some weight in order to play the role, presumably in an attempt to amp up his creep factor, and it works. Throughout the movie I kept thinking to myself ‘He looks like he got hit with a bag of hammers or a baseball bat with a dozen hypodermic needles filled with high grade street smack nailed through it.’ Now I’m not exactly sure what street smack is, but it looks like someone stuck a whole bunch of it in Gyllenhaal’s eye sockets.
What results is a character so familiar, yet so shutter inducing that you’ll leave the movie feeling slimy, the curtain of reality is rolled back a little bit and you see the societal sausage being made. It makes you never want to watch the news again. If you already don’t watch the news, it will make you want to start watching just so you can stop watching it again out of spite.
“Nightcrawler” shows you a view of the world probably not too far removed from reality where even the “honest” stingers are exploiting human tragedy, making a direct profit off of the suffering of someone else. The more horrific the better, there’s gold in them there kills, and we gobble it up like it’s the last supper, give me more of your body, give me more of your blood, please and thank you.
Just something to think about.