Relevant for our current times

Rating: 8/10 (16 February 2019)

Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a loner thief in Los Angeles. He changes direction and turns to filming intrusive close-up scenes of violent crimes and sells the footage to a local TV station with the assistance of a young man Rick (Riz Ahmed) who is desperately unemployed.
Director/screenwriter Dan Gilroy does a fine job in keeping the film filled with excitement and suspense. The script is praiseworthy as there is never a predictable moment. It's a tense ride throughout with only rare scenes of violence but many scenes of violence's aftermath.
In "Nightcrawler", Gyllenhaal gives one of his best performances as someone who is morally vacant with no humanity at all while being very adept and skillful at the creepy work that he does. It's a chilling experience to watch him go through the motions. His performance is well matched by Ahmed as well as RenÃ© Russo as an equally amoral news director at the TV station.
A subtle backdrop to this film is a cruel economy that sometimes encourages some people to grovel at the bottom of the barrel to get any kind of paid work. Lou is an obvious example. Rick could easily represent the many in his generation who are forced into unpaid/underpaid internships or something equally as horrible.
The ending is satisfying though there seems to be perhaps a feeling of too much soullessness. However, if Gilroy's intention was to use this to show the hyper-sleaze of tabloid TV news and the bleakness of our modern culture, he succeeds hands-down.