Nightcrawler (9 out of 10) Written and Directed by Dan Gilroy; starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Bill Paxton; rated R (violence including graphic images, and for language); in wide release everywhere; running time: 117 minutes.
The world at night is a completely different world than during the day. And it requires a completely different type of person to live in it. Louis Bloom is that different kind of person.
“Nightcrawler” opens with Bloom trying to make a couple bucks by stealing copper wire and boosting manhole covers for money. His moral lines are quickly established when he is confronted by a blustery security guard in a dark industrial park. Bloom attacks the guard, takes his watch and gets away clean.
He sells the goods and as they wrap up the deal, he asks for a job and pitches himself in exactly the way self-help videos have been telling us to do for years. He is rebuffed and told quite clearly that they are “not hiring a goddam thief”. Bloom is taken back slightly, but then takes it in good stead and leaves.
As he is driving home he happens upon a car wreck. While he is watching the police try to save the trapped driver, a news van skids up and the camera man jumps out and starts filming everything. Bloom follows the camera man, Bill Paxton at his most unpleasant best, around and gets his first lessons on Nightcrawling: get there first, get up close, get the shot, get paid. And from there he is off. He steals a bike and trades it in for his first video camera and a police scanner and gets to work.
Where does a person without a conscience belong? What happens when a sociopath goes into an industry as conscienceless as him?
Gyllenhall is absolutely mesmerizing as Bloom. He is gaunt and always watching. Taking in everything. His face is almost skeletal, his eyes wide and unblinking. Except when he is on a crime scene and then they come alive.
His Lou Bloom is like the Stephen R. Covey of sociopaths. He speaks in a never ending litany of self-help adages and corporate sales speak. But there is also a sense that he rests a bit on the spectrum. He sees the world in a very precise way, and he has built his life in such a way in order to keep moving. He never sleeps – he prowls at night and consumes the internet during the day.
First time director Dan Gilroy has created a near perfect debut film, with a cast that fits seamlessly into every role. This is a focused and lean film. It knows exactly what it wants to be, and it nails it. There is no wasted time or unnecessary plot complications. Everything serves the story. It is a perfect molding of plot and character.
The camera work is very austere and still. Always watching, but never commenting. The greatest miracle of this movie is that I had no idea where it was going, which is almost unheard of in this world of recycled Pop-Pablum. And then when it got where it was going, it really was the only place it could have ended.
I don’t know that it is a comedy, even though that is how it was marketed, there are funny parts – but it is never about the punchlines. It is about this one very real feeling character that finds his art, and that art is what fuels our 24 hour news cycle culture.
“I would never ask you to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself.”