Nightcrawler

So I'm not totally sure why I have a lot of movies on my Netflix list that focus on a white guy slipping into madness with a dark, gritty, tension filled environment. First Filth, now Nightcrawler.

I heard about Nightcrawler when it came out in 2014 and everyone raved about it. Everyone was putting Nightcrawler on the top of their list of best of 2014 and here I was not seeing it. Now I think I'm like a lot of people that when someone raves about a movie and tells me that I have to see it, I often have the gut instinct to do the opposite and not see it. Usually this happens when my friend raves about a TV show or a movie and he did the same with Nightcrawler. But I also got that from a lot of sources and that's why when it became available on Netflix, I put it on my list but it took a long time for me to actually watch it. But now since I'm doing what I like to call The December Netflix Purge, I thought it was time to finally watch this film and see what I thought for myself.

Nightcrawler is the story of a peculiar man named Louis "Lou" Bloom (played by Jake Gyllenhaal). At the beginning of the movie, he's trying to make money and make a career but he doesn't have any schooling or any particular set of skills, including social skills to make an actual career.

And when I say social skills, I mean this guy is weird. This isn't the kind of movie where the guy starts off normal and descends into madness, no Lou Bloom is a psycho. I have to imagine there was a line on the budget for this movie for Visine because Jake Gyllenhaal blinks very seldomly in this film. The best way to think about Lou Bloom is Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, but less successful. I went back and read my review for American Psycho and I feel like there might be some similarities to what I thought of that, and what I thought of Nightcrawler.

One night, Lou sees an accident, but more importantly, he sees the camera team that shows up to film the accident so they can sell their footage to local news stations. Lou sees this as an opportunity to create a new career. He goes off, buys a new camera and a police scanner, and he goes to respond to accidents and crime scenes in order to get footage for the local news station. He develops a working, then really weird, kind of abusive relationship with the director of a particular station named Nina (played by Rene Russo) and hires a partner named Rick (played by Riz Ahmed).

Everyone soon figures out that Lou is actually pretty good at this. There's a montage where him and Rick are just hitting crime scene after crime scene and getting all this footage that gets him a reputation to the station, and other nightcrawlers like one played by Bill Paxton.

Now filming victims of accidents and crimes is pretty intrusive already and they all ride a little bit of a morally grey line, even in the beginning. But eventually, Lou gets his reputation by really bending that line and eventually doing things that are kind of messed up to get the good stories and get the best shots.

Lou never harms anybody directly, even though there are a couple of moments where Gyllenhaal does not blink and you think that he's gonna stab someone. No Lou causes destruction and by incredibly passive means. He starts sabotaging other nightcrawlers, he starts moving evidence and bodies to get a good shot, and eventually even causes crimes or accidents to happen so he can be the first one on site.

All the while he films it with this almost voyeuristic look that is almost sadistic. I took a moment to wonder what this movie would have been like if the main character had just been a regular guy and it had been that slipping into madness, well that's not really what this is about. Lou Bloom represents the evil and everyone else, especially Rene Russo's character is the public that eats it up.

The movie has quite an interesting message about the glorification of violence in our media today and how the news is not about informing anymore, it's more about the entertainment.

There's not a lot of information that comes from the footage that Bloom gets, but he gets the most graphic stuff and the station just asks the question, is this legal.

In fact there's a point in the movie where Rene Russo asks someone in the station, can we show this? The person asks, 'Legally?' and Russo responds sarcastically, 'No morally, yes legally'. The question of morality is not really in this movie and it's absence is very notable.

It's actually a little bit sick when you think about it and while I don't usually watch the local news, suddenly I'm a little bit interested to see how much of the news is actual information, and how much of it is glorifying violence to raise ratings.

And then you've got Gyllenhaal.

Now I said this in my American Psycho review, I'm not particularly drawn to stories about serial killers and psychopaths. If they are the main character, I lose a little bit of interest. I'm interested if it's something like Criminal Minds where they go after the psychos, but usually I'm not prone to loving the stories centered on sociopaths.

And while that is the case for Nightcrawler, I do have to commend Gyllenhaal for creating a really chilling and disturbing character. I was thinking last night, of the two movies I've watched recently focusing on characters who would essentially be the bad guys, which one was better, Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom or James McEvoy as Bruce Robertson. But now after sleeping on it, the choice is pretty clear and it's Gyllenhaal. I think I like McEvoy's character more but that's because he's got some redeeming qualities about him. Gyllenhaal is just a psychopath through and through and what's more is that he rarely cracks. I think there's really only two times in the movie that Lou Bloom is not calm, collected, and almost charismatic.

He's almost like a Batman villain with how insane he is and yeah, it's a really good performance.

Again, I'm not privy to roles like this, which is probably another reason why it took me so long to actually watch this film, but I will say that this is a really interesting character study and Gyllenhaal gives an insane, chilling performance throughout.

Now I will say that there are a couple of plot holes in the story and it's not as strong as the individual performance of Gyllenhaal. I will give a similar critique I did for Dope in that I feel like there were moments in the film that Rene Russo and Riz Ahmed's character could have easily said no and this whole scheme of Lou Bloom's would have not worked as well. While he's like a Batman villain and he comes off as calculated and in control the whole time, I'm not totally sure that's always the case in this film.

The weird thing about this film is that with the music and some of the things that Lou Bloom says, they kind of make it seem like you're supposed to root for this guy. Maybe it's because I knew the plot of this movie and I knew how twisted it was going to get that I didn't buy into that, but I was really surprised how hopeful they tried to make Lou Bloom and at the same time, it's juxtaposed with this voyeuristic exploitation of people's pain. That was strange to me.

The other actors in the film were pretty good. Bill Paxton is always fun. Riz Ahmed was good and I'm looking forward to him in Rogue One. Rene Russo actually kind of kills it in this film. While you kind of want to feel bad for her because she's kind of forced into this really uncomfortable situation with this really uncomfortable guy, she's actually a little bit twisted too.

Overall, the movie is a little bit twisted. I had a knee jerk aversion to this movie because everyone was raving about it. Even right after I finished watching it I couldn't help but try and find some things that didn't work for the film.

But while there are some issues, they're not very big ones. This is a good film. If 2014 wasn't such a stacked year, I would be a little bit surprised that Gyllenhaal wasn't at least nominated for an Oscar for his performance.

As a whole, Nightcrawler isn't gonna go on my top list of films I watched in 2016 (not to be confused with movies that came out in 2016), but that's only because this isn't my type of movie. I can point out what is good, but I can also point out what I like and what I don't like. I don't not like Nightcrawler but I also am not gonna rave about it because like Dope, not exactly my cup of tea. I know that's a little bit confusing. In short, good film but personally I probably won't watch it again.

But those are my thoughts on Nightcrawler. What did you think of it? Do you think Gyllenhaal should have been nominated for an Oscar? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. So apparently Gyllenhaal auditioned for the role of Frodo in Lord of the Rings and bombed his audition. Here's a fun interview about that. Enjoy!