Gyleenaal makes your skin crawl.

Rating: 7/10 (6 November 2014)

Jake Gylennall channels Norman Bates and TV news gets cuffed around in Nightcrawler an absorbing tale of cold blooded ambition. Shot in an around the neo noir capital of LA Gyllenhaal as Louis Bloom slithers through its dark underbelly with a disturbing detachment that garners him the attention and admiration of local station directors and talking heads who live by the coda "If it bleeds it leads." Bloom, a petty criminal out ripping off fencing and manhole covers one evening comes upon an auto accident being covered by free lance videographers and decides to give it a shot. With a second rate video camera and first rate chutzpah he barrels into action, crossing police barriers and getting what others can't. His work now leads the newscast and he parleys that into bedding a ratings desperate news director Nina (Renee Russo)and hot red muscle car to roam LA after dark in search of carnage. When he is first on the scene to a house invasion with three dead he gets the money shots but also withholds evidence in hopes of stage managing an even bigger exclusive.
Gyllenhaal is annoyingly excellent as the creepy Bloom, a focused pragmatic, misfit void of empathy and compassion. He may lack social skills and border on psychotic but his self confidence and deductive reasoning remains dispassionately sound. In a strong supporting role Rene Russo's news manager may be more grounded but she is just as jaded and perverse as Bloom as she plays fast and loose with the truth for ratings.
Writer director Dan Gilroy does a fine job of maintaining suspense while hammering home the theme of the media run amok. In addition cinematographer Dan Elswit's night shots and fractured hand held imagery inform and provide a suitable backdrop to Bloom's task at hand. It is the highly effective and disturbing performance of Gyllenhaal though that remains at the center of Nightcrawler, elevating it to an above average thriller with some hints of Network thrown in.