If it bleeds, it leads...

Rating: 8/10 (27 November 2014)

Nightcrawler is the first directorial effort from writer Dan Gilroy, brother of Oscar nominee Tony Gilroy. However, Dan has his fair share of successful writing too. You may have seen "Real Steel" or the latest installment from the Bourne franchise starring Jeremy Renner. And "Nightcrawler" may even end up as his best-received film. Critics and audiences seem to enjoy it a lot.
Most of this is probably due to Jake Gyllenhaal's performance as Louis Bloom. I was not familiar with the concept of nightcrawling before, never really thought about where these morning news get their footage from, and this may have made the viewing experience even more intense. The film starts off solid and gets better the more Gyllenhaal dives into madness. I actually really liked the beginning. He is just another unemployed guy trying to make a living. Pretty normal and it adds a nice contemporary reference in these times of recession. However, what comes next is far from normal. His character moves closer and closer to the darker side. First he just watches a colleague, then he makes his own recordings. Not much later he starts moving injured or even dead people at the scene of an accident, so he can get better footage. Afterwards he enters a murder scene before the police arrives and next he pretty much stages a shooting that involves innocent bystanders at a diner and finally he commits manslaughter himself. All for the best coverage. The aforementioned diner scene is possibly the best thing this movie has to offer. It reaches greatness here. Truly tense just like the whole ending pretty much. I loved that it was pretty much in the sense of good vs. evil the worst ending that could have happened. Not only did Bloom not have to face any legal consequences, but he even managed to expand his business thanks to his ruthlessness.
The mirror destruction scene earlier on wasn't even needed to display the main characters descent into insanity. It was even a bit too showy for my taste. The quiet way, as it was for the rest of this film, just by his actions with other people around was mesmerizing enough already. Other than that, there was not much I did not like about this movie. Maybe his colleague's accident was slightly too much of a coincidence, but the way it was directed was very nicely done again with the two looking at each other. Performances by Russo (director's wife), Ahmed and Paxton were solid, but this film is all really just a huge showpiece for Gyllenhaal. Also I expected his new watch to play a significant role towards the end, maybe one that leads to his death. But I was wrong. And finally, we need to see that Bloom is really just a pawn in the chess game of the entertainment industry here, so this film works excellently as well as a study on television and how far people go for the most exciting, and thus most profitable, news.