As an indictment of the amoral mindset the media can sometimes display in the pursuit of ratings and profit, Nightcrawler is very effective but doesn’t say anything especially new.
As an exploration of various ugly and unpleasant character traits – desperation, entitlement, blind ambition – it feels original and striking. And much of the credit must go to Jake Gyllenhaal, an actor in the midst of an amazing run of bold performances in challenging roles. Here, as Lou Bloom, the night-crawling freelance news cameraman of the title, he pulls off the remarkable feat of draining himself of all humanity while creating a compellingly poisonous character. Bloom exists on the fringes of Los Angeles’ society, scavenging and stealing whatever he can sell in order to get by. But he has dreams of something better, and he’s cunning and dogged enough to work hard for his goal. When he discovers that local news stations will pay for video footage of accidents and aftermaths of crimes, he invests in a cheap camera, recruits an intern (Riz Ahmed, terrific) and begins his new career.
Bloom is a natural – mainly because he doesn’t care about the injured or dying people on the other side of his lens. Or anyone else, for that matter. Writer-director Dan Gilroy has a number of fair-to-middling B-movies on his resume as a screenwriter, but he’s upped his game with his debut behind the camera, giving Nightcrawler a propulsive, pulpy energy that meshes ideally with its unsettling insights into human nature.
