Nightcrawler

Rating: 8/10 (26 November 2014)

When Lou Bloom, a driven man desperate for work, muscles into the world of L.A crime journalism, he blurs the line between observer and participant to become the star of his own story. Aiding him in his effort is Nina, a TV- news veteran.
Nightcrawler is written and directed by Dan Gilroy, it stars Jake Gyllenhaal. A lot of people were buzzing about this movie and Jake Gyllenhaal's performance, then I read things about the screenplay and that is mainly why I was really looking forward to this film. Firstly, Jake Gyllenhaal gives probably the best performance of his entire career. He has blew my mind earlier this year in Enemy and he's elevating the acting level one more time. Gyllenhaal is fantastic because he manages to make you forgive who he is and what he has done before: he embodies perfectly this character. His performance is honestly worth an Oscar nomination alongside with Matthew McConaughey as he has as well did such good choices in the last years with Zodiac and Prisoners for instance. Secondly, the screenplay is a real masterpiece; you cannot stop focusing on the dialogue scenes and the fact that the character is becoming this obsessed guy trying to capture the perfect crime on film and making money doing so by selling it to news channel. As you watch him and his obsession you can actually see his evolution, him turning into this psychopath. It's really interesting as you are trying to figure out how his brain is working, what he is thinking, you're even starting to root for him and want him to succeed even if he's the protagonist and the villain of his own movie, Bill Paxton's character is likable next to him. In fact, he's not the most likable guy ever but he intrigues you, you want to know where he goes, see how he gets to the next step and how he optimizes everything. Moreover, Nightcrawler is a very good looking movie. But the main point here, is the understandability of his obsession as you know where he's coming from and little by little you understand him as a person. It makes you questioned yourself and it made me crazy. That is also why his performance works so well and why the screenplay is so good, it focuses entirely on characters. Finally, this movie has also the most suspenseful finale I've seen all year; the last 20 minutes are absolutely brilliant.
Overall Nightcrawler is an interesting and intense character based movie evolving around the underworld of the news, with a brilliant performance by Jake Gyllenhaal.