Louis Darko

Rating: 8/10 (11 November 2014)

Hints of Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy are sprinkled throughout this jet-black comedy from Dan "brother of Tony" Gilroy. But while Scorsese's film had the merciful release of Rupert Pupkin's final vindication, Nightcrawler is a film about darkness and dirt, and it rarely emerges into the light.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays Louis Bloom, a drifter seeking a job and seeking a purpose. After happening upon a road accident, and witnessing a team of cameramen record the events in order to sell the footage to a news station, he decides to become a freelance photojournalist. Of sorts. Starting out with a camcorder and a banger of a car, he builds his reputation and his wealth through a combination of ruthlessness, sleeplessness, blackmail, and some well, 'careful' framing. Lou is hunting the ultimate tragedy, and in the end he'll get it.
This is Gilroy's first directorial feature after writing gigs on the splendid The Fall and the not-so-splendid The Bourne Legacy. Nightcrawler has the marks of authorship throughout. Each frame is exactingly busy, spattered with artefacts and colour. There are, inevitably, hints of Michael Mann in this dusky depiction of L.A. – a comparison even stronger when composer James Newton Howard brings in the howling guitars.
I greatly admire Gyllenhaal's understated work in Zodiac and Prisoners. His performance here is something else. No more skillful, perhaps, but more externalised. Louis is an irredeemable product of modern capitalism. Does it ring true that a technophile like he would bring along his tapes in person, rather than uploading them to the studio? I think so. Gradually we get the sense that this is lonely yet confident man who really can achieve anything if he's given time with the puppeteers, face-to-face.
Riz Ahmed's role, as Louis's sidekick, is somewhat thankless, but it's another highly accomplished performance from the British actor, here adopting a note-perfect California accent. As Nina Romina, Rene Russo (Gilroy's spouse) embodies the fragile ambitions of a woman on a downward slide. Her outbursts are tinged with fear and sadness.
This is a low down film in more ways than one. We're at ground level from start to finish. Even the TV studio resembles a bunker. A depiction of the city as an oubliette: somewhere from which people don't escape. Newscasters exist not to inform but to instil fear in the denizens of this segregated zoo. It's a chillingly bleak vision, chiefly because it's plausible.
Nightcrawler represents bold, atmospheric filmmaking, with a script full of humour and clarity. It mines a rich vein of satire, which may not be to the taste of every viewer. A hero Lou is not. But as charismatic monsters go, he joins Dan Stevens' The Guest as one of the year's most memorable.