Nightcrawler - Movie Review

I've come to realize a lot things about film in the past year, from how to get it done right to who are some of my favorite actors. This year especially I can confirm that Jake Gyllenhaal is one of my all-time favorite actors and that I wish I could see more in more films. Zodiac, Enemy, Donnie Darko (which I reviewed earlier this year) to name a few. Hell, he was almost Spiderman in Spiderman 2 from 2004 and last year he entered into the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Mysterio, one of Spiderman's biggest villains and him being the first interpretation of this character on the big screen. He's just excellent at so much in film, including work behind productions. He's also a very nice man with some of his activism in environmentalism and charity. But no matter what he's just a stunning actor to me, especially in a pretty recent film called Nightcrawler.

Nightcrawler is the story of Louis "Lou" Bloom, a thief who, while driving home, witnesses a car crash. He then sees some freelance photojournalists, or stringers, recording the event. He becomes interested, obtains a camera and police scanner, and starts to film graphics accidents and crimes that have just been committed. Eventually he starts to sell them to a news station and it kicks off his new career in photo journalism. But as he gets more and more into this new career the darkness and morbidness of it all begins to twist him even more psychologically and soon he becomes wrapped up in a series of brutal crimes that he is filming.

I heard previously about this movie a few years ago and I wasn't too interested in it because I was very... innocent in terms of media and film. But I'm much more knowledgeable now and watching it now I was very pleased with what I saw. Though researching this movie I found out this film deserves a lot better than what it's gotten. Nightcrawler got absolutely snubbed by that piece of crap horror movie, Ouija, when it came out a week after and while this film was nominated for best original screenplay at the Oscars, it lost to Birdman. Look, I know people love that film and I've still got to watch it, but that type of story has been done before. This though, with Nightcrawler... correct me if I'm wrong, but I've not seen or heard of anything like this before. Besides, I find the Oscars to be baised towards anything that's film/ actor related and snub anything remotely scary or creepy because the Oscars are mostly run by a bunch of old farts.

Let's start with Jake Gyllenhaal. I already splurged about him and forgive me if I do it a bit more, but this acting in this film is fan-fucking-tastic. For the first bit I could clearly see him, but very quickly I saw him as Lou, this psychopathic cameraman who has gained a passion for filming graphic violence. He is able to put on such charms for the other characters while disguising how twisted he is. Yet, despite all this, I kind of cared about his character. We see him work his way up out of being a nobody to making something, even if what he does now is very morally questionable, and that gives him a sense of accomplishment and something to root for. He is excellent at selling himself to other people like a real business person, takes care of a plant in his apartment, and listens to people's feedback. He's both the hero and the villain of the movie and it's kind of scary.

There's a scene at a restaurant with him and this news director he's been selling his footage to, played by Rene Russo. He has kind of an attraction to her (I think?), but he also is thinking more and more like a businessman as he gets more respect for his talents. In this scene though he takes off a bit of the veil of polite charm he has and basically blackmails her to have sex with him or else he'll terminate his business with her. The way it plays out is to creepy, but Lou is able to always keep his cool the whole time. In fact almost the entire movie except for one scene do we ever see him really angry. And he never swears at all. This character is a blend of traits, both approving and unsettling, that make him so worth following. The movie instantly sets him up as a someone who isn't very good, but seeing him start to win through hard makes him oddly likable.

While Jake Gyllenhaal stole the film I got to give praise to the other actors of the movie because they were great as well. There is of course Rene Russo as news director, Nina Romina, but there's also Charlene "Michael" Hyatt as Detective Frontieri, who starts to investigate a certain crime that Lou recorded footage of, and Riz Ahmed as Lou's hired intern, Rick. He especially put on a great show because he's at first kind of a nobody as well like Lou, but he's a lot more of a innocent follower. The things he has to go through with the mostly (and disturbingly) calm Lou is crazy! He doesn't mind what Lou does at first for his job, but as things get more and more intense we see him question Lou more, which I absolutely understand. I wish we got to see more of them at conflict in the film, but I'm very happy with what we got.

I never watch the news. Never ever. This film absolutely shows why I don't watch the news because most news is about accidents, disasters, or violence. Lou explains this more in detail in the movie, but there's barely anything nice on the news. Nightcrawler gets into the dark underbelly of news reporting and it's grim. Rene Russo's character becomes pretty twisted by Lou throughout the movie as she becomes more willing to broadcast more and more graphic material. But just seeing how not just that news station, but multiple others keep showing the violence around the city makes me feel uneasy and uncomfortable. Maybe because it just makes the film seem so real. There's a point in the movie where a people are murdered in a house and Lou's footage of the scene is so unsettling and horrifying that I was hoping somebody would go against Nina Romina and refuse to put that footage on TV. And yet they do it because it'll attract a lot of viewers, which brings in money. I can see that absolutely happening in the real world and it makes me feel sick.

Okay now I really, really need to talk about the cinematography. It's excellent! The movie is basically about a camera man filming graphic stuff for TV, so Jake Gyllenhaal had to learn how to shoot scenes himself with multiple types of cameras. The shots that he does, as well as the usual shots from the film's camera crew, are great because they really capture the powerful moments of each scene with great detail. Plus in this film the cameras get into some crazy places. I'll get into it in a bit, but during the climax the camera caught so much and kept me at the edge of my seat. The scene I mentioned before with the murders in a house was so well shot by both the crew and Gyllenhaal, capturing how horrifying such a scene was that it made my skin crawl. By having such great camera skills from Gyllenhaal I felt like the movie was leaking in the real world and I was watching some real actually happen, which really disturbed me.

Lastly I got to talk more in depth on the script/ story. As I already said, Lou is a character who starts out at rock bottom, but rises up as he discovers a new talent and evolves it. At first when he gets to crime scenes the authorities, whether they're police or fireman or whatever, quickly notice him trying to get close to the harmed victim, to which they yell at him and tell him to back off. Now there is sort of a time skip around half-way through the film and it kind of bugged me because there was such a huge change because Lou goes from newcomer to high-class photo journalist through this skip. Hell, he goes from a piece of junk car to something a celebrity would drive. He did start making a lot more money, but I would have liked to see this transition more than just the time jump. But that's just a small part, considering how excellently everything is written. The finale especially is epic, involving a car chase that gets so crazy, especially with how the camera (both from Lou and the film crew) gets into the scene. It's fantastic buildup, keeping me tense throughout a majority of it and making me jump at come nasty moments of violence!

Nightcrawler chilled me and unsettled me, but it also kept my eyes glued to the screen and got quite a few reactions out of me. While it is a work of fiction the film just feel so real that I can see it as something that can (or possibly has) happen in the real world. With powerful performances, really good camera work, a strong sense of realism, all mixed with a very original script, Nightcrawler becomes a fantastic film. So many smaller movies go unappreciated... Guys, go see Nightcrawler, it'll definitely be worth your time.

Tentative Score: 9.25/10

Definitive Score: 9.25/10

It's so odd how Jake Gyllenhaal keeps getting to play these weird characters. Or maybe I got to watch more of his films.