Original, distinctive drama thriller, ambitious in everything it sets out to do

Rating: 9/10 (2 September 2015)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a mysterious, lonely oddball, who is trawling the streets of LA looking for a job. One night, he chances on a highway accident, and is struck by cameraman Joe (Bill Paxton) and his determination to be right at the scene for his local news channel. After obtaining his own equipment, he shoots some footage of his own, and brings it to the attention of station head Nina (Rene Russo), who comes to be impressed with his style. But as he becomes more deeply drawn to his new activity, he crosses more and more blurred lines and becomes desperate for the best.
While most films are driven by an intriguing plot and a cohesive narrative of some kind, there are sometimes those that are motivated by a central performance, or as a character study of a certain individual. Intended as a satire of the twenty four hour news culture, and of the ruthless determination to succeed in that world, debut director Dan Gilroy, who at the age of fifty five at least has a lot of writing credits to his name, has given us in Nightcrawler Gyllenhaal's Bloom, a fictional character set against the backdrop of this modern world. Channeling a method style in the vein of Robert De Niro, he creates a character with a mysterious background, who has something smouldering beneath him that begs to be unravelled. He's a socially awkward and unaware man who doesn't come off as a normal person in any way, and at certain points, like when standing in front of a bathroom mirror, suddenly unleashes a roar of insanity.
Although awkward, he is charismatic and hooks the viewer and the people around him in with this magnetic web. These people create some fine supporting characters, including Paxton's rival 'nightcrawler', who goes from being disinterested to frustratedly desperate to work with our anti-hero, as well as Brit Riz Ahmed, managing a fine American accent as Bloom's hungry but naïve co-worker, and Russo's station controller, who proves only marginally less hungry for infamy as our lead boy. But above everyone else, this is destined to be one of Gyllenhaal's defining roles, in a film centred around him and driven by his character's mesmerizing personal quest. In the first film he's directed, much like the film itself, Gilroy coats the whole thing in more of an intriguing style and veneer than anything else, but it doesn't make it any less dynamic or original.
It would have been nice for more layers of this edgy and mysterious character to have been revealed, especially since the film is so centred on him, but Gilroy has still achieved something quite funky and new. ****