‘Nightcrawler’ is dark, stylish and unsettling
Set in perhaps the same stylized fictional Los Angeles as Ryan Gosling’s “Drive,” “Nightcrawler” is glazed in the same noir coating and prone to fits and starts of brutality and, occasionally, biting humor.
It’s not an easy film to recommend, as it asks much of the audience: following (and perhaps rooting for?) Lou Bloom (played by Jake Gyllenhaal), an amoral, functioning sociopath with no regard for humankind who carries himself like someone who would not be legally allowed within 500 yards of a school.
But just as Martin Scorsese made us want to tag along with a maladjusted misfit named Travis Bickle a few decades ago with a little film called “Taxi Driver,” first-time director Dan Gilroy places us directly in Bloom’s destructive path, and with Gyllenhaal as the lead, it’s quite hard to look away.
Bloom first appears as a rudderless petty thief, clipping wire and fencing from construction sites to resell to other companies. Our first encounter with him shows Bloom being approached by a security guard whom Bloom proceeds to viciously pummel and then steal his watch.
Yup, he’s not the cuddly type. He’s driven to succeed in business, though he’s not sure what business it is. He’s got an answer for everything, but those answers are little more than platitudes from self-starting business courses found online. And his drive is frighteningly one-track. Pity the poor soul who decides to challenge him.
After stumbling upon an accident, he realizes in the mangled mess of metal, glass and body parts, that this is exactly where he needs to be - documenting it all for the local television news stations.
After purchasing a camcorder and a police scanner, Bloom’s in business. He hires a desperate street hustler (played by a wonderfully jittery Riz Ahmed, channeling his inner Ratso Rizzo) as his “assistant” with the promise of $30 a night.
Along the way, the film takes time to tackle the current state of the TMZ-fueled media. Rene Russo appears as a seasoned television vet who provides Lou with the kernel of wisdom of the current state of affairs, which boils down to “rich white folks getting killed by poor minorities.” But “Nightcrawler” also takes digs at corporate management in general, as Lou rattles off lines of the will to succeed today which may look OK on a coffee mug, but are downright frightening when taken to their literal interpretation as he does.
It is a film that does not seem to play by any Hollywood convention, which will certainly be off-putting to many audience members who enjoy things neatly tied, heroes winning and bad guys getting their comeuppance. But “Nightcrawler” wants no part of that, for the betterment of the picture.
Its other advantage is Gyllenhaal, who has honestly never been better on the screen. While we have no real backstory on his character, it’s no bother as the actor gives us all we need to know with his emaciated frame, unblinking stares, and nervous, discomforting laughter. He’s been electric before (“Zodiac” and “Prisoners” come immediately to mind), but never has he been this mesmerizing. We never know with every interaction he has with another person in this film if it will end with a smile or a knife in the throat.
“Nightcrawler” is dark as pitch, stylish and unsettling. And with it comes one of the year’s best male performances.
