A fun and nasty demented comedy

Rating: 7/10 (31 October 2014)

A satire of sorts on local TV news and the bottom feeders they hire to film human suffering and death, Nightcrawler is a vicious and deranged black comedy. Jake Gyllenhaal does a fantastic job as an amoral sociopath who is far too committed to his work as a freelance videographer who films whatever graphic carnage he can and sells it to the local scuzzy news program who's ratings depend on this garbage. Rene Russo runs the late shift and her character and Gyllenhaal's develop an unhealthy dependency on each other, until it tilts in Gyllenhaal's favor to icky results. Russo, who has been absent from screens for the better part of this decade, turns in a sharp performance that she modulates almost perfectly as a past her prime news director just trying to stay in the cesspool of early morning news. These characters have no redeeming value and the film mines comedy from them reducing the worst, most horrific crime to a hefty payday or ratings. Cinematographer Robert Elswit films LA in a sickly, almost diseased way and director Dan Gilroy keeps the tone demented throughout as we watch Louis Bloom - who seems to be channeling some shades of Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver - plummet down to some truly grievous depths. Nightcrawler is a cynical film that has the guts to never cop out on its repugnant subject matter.