Nightcrawler

Lou Bloom, played by Jake Gyllenhall, is a midnight rider living in Los Angeles looking for a job. After witnessing a car accident before dawn, he sees a cameraman, played by Bill Paxton, recording the damage. Hours later, he sees the same images on the morning news. Finally, Bloom discovers what he wants to do.

In “Taxi Driver,” Travis Bickle wanted justice. In “The King of Comedy,” Rupert Pupkin had a drive to be a celebrity. Both are disturbed solitary people who go to strange lengths to achieve their confused thoughts of The American Dream. Dan Jolin said in his review, “And in Nightcrawler’s Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) we find, more than 30 years later, the spiritual younger brother to these iconic Scorsese/De Niro creations: another dark-roaming misfit with malformed ambitions. But Lou doesn’t feel driven to right perceived wrongs or achieve fame (directly, at least). He has a more modest destiny in mind, making him the product of these ever more nakedly materialistic times.” Lou Bloom wants to be a successful businessman. A manager. Someone’s boss.

He is delusional enough to refer to “my company” when all he has is a camcorder, a police scanner, a fast car, and an “assistant” named Rick who is just a desperate street hustler, played by Riz Ahmed (who Jolin described as “with the nerve of a goose in a butcher’s). Given the set-up, you expect Lou’s journey into the murky world of freelance crime-scene videography to be a media-skewering satire. And, sure enough, we have tough-skinned TV station editor Rene Russo defining ‘news’ to ingenue Lou as “rich white folks getting killed by poor minorities”. If it bleeds, it leads.” What’s surprising is the way the 2014 movie also challenges modern corporate mentality.

Jolin said, “This sententious oddball armours himself in hollow management speak, exuding all the unearned business acumen of a contestant on The Apprentice. It’s as if he wants to shove all the variety of human behaviour and its baffling concept of morality into the rigid checkboxes of career development plans and performance reviews. Now imagine someone like that turning up to crime scenes with a video camera. Every gruesome clip flogged and televised is a step towards success.” You don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or shake.

Behind everything is screenwriter Dan Gilroy, making his directing debut. Complete creative freedom had brought out the best in him. Jolin credited, “Not only is it a cracking script — a character-driven thriller relying on psychological manipulations over plot twists — but there’s visual impact too, courtesy of DP Robert Elswit’s urban nightscapes. The drama is vibrantly captured in the same streetlight-drenched LA stalked by Michael Mann in Collateral and Nicolas Winding Refn in Drive.” Gilroy also creates one certain amazing car-chase, which is new in that it is actually a car-chase chase.

However, inside everything is Gyllenhaal. Jolin credited, “We’ve seen him nail discomfort: from metaphysically dislocated high-schooler Donnie Darko, to Zodiac’s twitchy killer-hunter, to his tightly buttoned-up cop in last year’s Prisoners. But here he both transforms and transcends. As Lou Bloom he is pale and wired, looking less gaunt than stretched. He talks in a nasal, high-register patter, reeling off his careerist jargon in a way that is borderline comedic, but for the edge he gives it. Gilroy provides no backstory for Bloom; it is Gyllenhaal’s performance that fills in the cracks. We don’t need to know, just to feel — and in that sense the actor serves plenty to chew on.”

Jolin continued, “Gloomy and disturbing, slick but queasy, Nightcrawler isn’t the kind of movie you’d expect to attract Oscar buzz. But Gyllenhaal’s performance may yet earn it that kind of attention, just as De Niro did for Taxi Driver. The darkest horse has entered the 2014 race.”

Sharp, dark, satirical, bone-chillingly thrilling, with a career-high turn from Jake Gyllenhaal. This was 2014’s Drive.

If you haven’t seen this movie yet, you should. This is one of the crazy roles Gyllenhaal has played, but you love every minute of it. You will get into the insanity this film sucks you into. I didn’t see this in the theaters that year, but I had heard revies of it and rented it from the library when it was released. See this and look into the man’s head.

Thank you for joining in on “Bill Paxton Month.” Check out next month when I look at another action franchise with two of the famous action stars of their time.