Nightcrawler (15)
Nightcrawler (15)
Dir: Dan Gilroy
With: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed
Runtime: 117 minutes
DAN Gilroy's tale of a hustler who wields a camcorder at crime scenes the way Weegee did a camera is a slick-as-they-come thriller. For those in the mood to despair about the direction of broadcast news, however, it will play as a horror movie. If this is the future of broadcast news over here - in the States it is already the present - it sucks.
Jake Gyllenhaal (End of Watch, Source Code) plays Louis Bloom, a small-time thief who steals scrap metal and anything else he can get his mitts on. But Louis has bigger plans, ones that come into focus when he comes across a road accident and sees a chancer with a camera filming the victim. Learning that local news stations will pay for such amateur footage, Louis resolves to become the first and the fastest with video of other people's misfortunes. Robberies, shootings, plane crashes, Louis collects them all as trophies. Every victim is a "sale". When he finds a ratings-chasing news executive, Nina (Rene Russo) as keen on crime gore as he is, it is the start of an ugly friendship.
This is the directorial debut of Gilroy, whose writing credits include The Bourne Legacy and Real Steel. Russo is his wife and Gyllenhaal is among the film's producers. This would normally herald an overabundance of appearances by both, and so it proves, but when two actors are on this kind of form, who is complaining?
Russo is terrific as the been there, done it all news executive who is prepared to embrace this brave new world of zero ethics journalism while wiser heads look on disgusted.
Hacks before her may have embraced the old saw "if it bleeds it leads", but Nina practically snogs it.
Gyllenhaal rips the bones from his part as a seedy operator with dreams of being a media mover and shaker, which is just as well as his obvious relish takes attention away from how thinly drawn the character is. We know Louis is a scumbag, but we do not know why.
Perhaps Gilroy is making a point about Louis being as shallow as the media he serves, but at times Gyllenhaal is too obviously putting in a performance rather than coming across as a convincing person. Still, what a performance.
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