Nightcrawler
Tags: dark, mystery, neo noir, murder, violence, satire

Plot synopsis:
It's late at night in the city of Los Angeles. Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) has broken into a train yard to try and break off a chain link fence. An officer approaches him and demands to see some ID. Lou keeps his cool and shows it to him, and then he attacks the man and kills him. Lou later takes the broken up fence to a scrapyard and sells the fence to the yard's owner while trying to negotiate a higher price. He then asks the owner if he is hiring, since he can start immediately. He uses his motto, "If you want to win the lottery, you gotta have the money to buy a ticket." The owner rebuffs him and says he won't hire a thief.A few cop cars pass Lou on the road. He pulls over to see what they're investigating. A car is on fire, and people are inside. A van of nightcrawlers - guys who record violent incidents at night for profit - pull up, led by Joe Loder (Bill Paxton). Lou sees Loder filming while two men pull a woman from the vehicle. Lou approaches Loder and asks about the job. Loder says it's a "flaming asshole of a job." Lou asks him if they're hiring and Loder says no.Lou steals a bike on the beach the next day and goes to pawn it off. The shop owner will only go as far as $700, but Lou asks for $800 in store credit so he can get a camcorder and a police scanner. Using these, he listens to reports of incidents in the area. He pulls up to multiple crime scenes and is told to leave by the police. He manages to get good graphic footage of a man who was shot to death after a carjacking. The police turn Lou and another nightcrawler away, the latter who angrily curses Lou out for ruining his shot. Lou follows the man as he calls his employer and overhears how much the man is set to make off the footage.Lou goes to the Channel 6 news station and meets news director Nina Romina (Rene Russo). He shows her and another station producer, Frank Kruse (Kevin Rahm) the footage, with good shots of the man dead and paramedics trying to revive him. Lou only makes $250 off the footage, despite trying to go way higher. He once again tries asking for a job or an internship position to no avail.Lou interviews a young man named Rick (Riz Ahmed) for an internship position, making it seem like he's heading some big news station. Rick is practically homeless and struggling to find work, and he has little experience in this sort of field. Lou simply asks him if he has a phone with GPS, and Rick says yes. Lou hires him on the spot and tells him he'll get paid $30 a night.Lou makes Rick read off directions to him as they go looking for incidents. Lou drives like a maniac and makes Rick nervous. He accidentally gives him wrong directions, and they arrive to the scene of a home fire too late, as paramedics have already wheeled the victim away. Lou is furious with Rick.People are gathered around a shooting in a suburban home. Lou sneaks in through the back and into the kitchen where he rearranges pictures on the fridge to focus on the bullet holes and a shot of the neighbors talking to police. Nina loves the footage but Frank says it looks like Lou broke in. She still uses it.Eventually, Lou and Rick are able to get a lot of new footage of horrifying incidents (with headlines like "toddler stabbed" and "drunk mom hits biker"), which Lou continues to sell to Nina. He gives her an impassioned speech about how he's come up with his business plan and how he has hoped to make a name for himself, which seems to almost move Nina.Lou stands by Nina when two anchors from her station are set to report on one of the incidents that Lou got on camera. He mentions a Mexican restaurant and invites Nina to go with him. Nina declines, as she doesn't want to compromise their professional relationship, but Lou implies that he'll stop giving her good footage if she says no.Loder finds Lou and offers him a spot on his team to deliver them some good footage. Lou turns him down, even as Loder persists. However, Lou very firmly rejects him, to Loder's anger.Nina joins Lou at the Mexican restaurant. He makes it clear he wants more than a professional relationship but she says this is just a courtesy date. He reminds her that the station is the lowest rated station in the area, and she needs him just as much as he wants her.Lou and Rick fail to arrive in time for another incident as Loder and his team beat him to the punch, leaving Lou with weak footage of a stabbing in Corona. Nina is pissed at him. Loder's coverage hits Channel 2 in all its glory. Lou smashes his bathroom mirror in fury. He goes to Loder's house and cuts the brakes on his van. This later leads to Loder crashing the van into a pole. Lou and Rick arrive in time for Lou to film Loder being wheeled away in a gurney, choking on his own blood.A big break comes when Lou and Rick happen upon a shooting/break-in at a large mansion. Lou sees two men fleeing the scene. He enters the house and films the dead bodies in each room. One victim is on the ground gasping for breath as Lou walks around him. He delivers the graphic footage to Nina, at which point he makes a demand for $15,000 for the footage, and not a cent lower, and he also wants the anchors to give him credit as Video Production News, and for him to be recognized as a credible news source. He makes it abundantly clear to Nina that he's calling the shots now. The anchors at the station report on the footage while Nina tells them what to say.Two detectives, Frontieri and Lieberman (Michael Hyatt and Price Carson), arrive at Lou's door to question him about the footage and if he saw the two men. He doesn't give a clear description of the men but he tells them that they were driving an SUV.Lou brings Rick to catch the killers and phone the cops. Rick demands a raise if he's going to keep tagging along on these sorts of missions. He meekly asks for $75 a night when Lou states he could've gone higher. Together, they find the killers and follow them to a restaurant. Lou phones the cops and says one of them has a gun. Two cops arrive and enter the place. Two more show up, and the killers begin to shoot at them. The cops shoot the larger killer dead while the other one gets away. Lou and Rick follow them in an intense chase. The cop car is hit by another car. Another cop car catches up to the killer and they crash. Lou stops the car and goes to get his shot. He tells Rick that the killer is dead. Rick goes to film the killer, only to find him alive and with a gun. He shoots Rick three times before crawling out. The killer aims his gun at the cops and is shot dead. Lou films his corpse and then films a dying Rick. Rick says Lou knew the killer was alive, and Lou implies that he did this since Rick threatened to compromise this whole operation. Rick dies.Lou brings all of this to Nina, who is enchanted by all the gruesome imagery. Detective Frontieri comes to the station and demands to have the footage as it is evidence, but Nina refuses to surrender the tapes. Frontieri later interrogates Lou, knowing he withheld information from them since he knew what the killers looked like. Furthermore, he remains unmoved by Rick's death, but he sticks by his word without flinching, and he is left free to walk.Frank approaches Nina and says the break-in at the mansion was really a drug robbery since there were multiple bags of cocaine found in there. He says this is the real story but Nina is focusing on the car chase and accident. Frank tells her she sounds like Lou, to which she replies that Lou has inspired them to reach higher.Now, Lou has established Video Production News with news vans and three interns. He gets then ready with their tasks, and adds that he won't make them do anything he won't do himself. With that, he guides them into the night to snap more footage of what the people really want to see.

Review: Nightcrawler throws you right into the gritty streets along with a hustling thief, Lou, who starts freelancing as a videographer of crime scenes and selling his footage to a news channel for money.
Also Gyllenhaal's chemistry with Rene Russo (the news director) is palatable and their work dynamic becomes more of a gripping co-dependency as the movie progresses.Nightcrawler is a must-watch for fans of cinema.
The film tells the story of Lou Bloom, a freelance videographer who covers the crime world in LA for a local news station and ruthless editor played by Rene Russo.
Bloom is a depraved individual and Jake Gyllenhaal deserves a hell of a lot acknowledgment for this role because he pulls off the tricky task of making the audience care about a character that is truly unlikeable and does so with not one false note.
He is brilliant when paired with the amazing monologue style rants written for him.Lou Bloom is a driven man reminiscent of a sociopath who finds he has a talent as "nightcrawling" in that he takes videos of true crimes as they are happening to be broadcast on the news.
His motivation and seeming lack of empathy allow him to break through and take the controversial images, and sell them with a strong aptitude for negotiation.As a character, he grows more and more "motivated" and seems to learn his business in such a way to bring him amazing success, but to the determinant, perhaps, of his assistant and the victims of these crimes.The writer/ director of this movie (making his directorial debut) certainly understands fear and comedy.
The film plunges us into the dark, seedy world of a nightcrawler, somebody who, often working freelance with his or her own equipment and schedule, patrols the streets of crowded cities with multiple police scanners searching for recently-committed crimes in the neighborhood, like rape, shootings, murders, car accidents, and so forth.
Job requirements include possible insomniac, lack of emotional connection or any immediate empathy to tragedy or horror, exceptional navigational/driving skills, and a load of free time.Jake Gyllenhaal plays Lou Bloom, a man at rock-bottom living in Los Angeles, selling scrap metal to get money before eventually turning to the nightcrawling business.
Together, the two make for an amateur nightcrawling team, turning profit by selling the footage – expertly shot, analyzed, and even occasionally manipulated by Lou – to Nina (Rene Russo), the station manager of a severely failing news station that is in dire need to regain viewership.Ultimately, "Nightcrawler" juggles two tricky but immersing features with its material, simultaneously giving us a look into a grimy and often dirty gig as somebody who is essentially a voyeur into the most vulnerable time of the people he meets and posing frightening commentary on contemporary news.
Director Dan Gilroy and cinematographer Robert Elswit (a frequent collaborator of Paul Thomas Anderson) do everything in their power to subvert our ideas of Los Angeles and focus on transitory locations that show the ugliest of human events in such a way that is beautiful and captivating thanks to crystal-clear photography.The other feature "Nightcrawler" toys with is the contemporary exploration of journalistic ethics and how, with local cable news competing with so many twenty-four hour news stations, who, in turn, are also battling more rapidly-updated social media websites, the manipulation of news is ever-present on Television.
He watches as Nina plays the tape on the air, directing the news anchors in such a specific way in terms of language and mannerisms that we see the fear-mongering happen right before our eyes.On top of all the social commentary, we see amazingly realistic crime scenes and car accidents to boot.
The attention to detail in these seems is simply exquisite and uncommonly believable."Nightcrawler," in addition, features a wonderful performance by Gyllenhaal who, like his co-star Paul Dano in last year's "Prisoners," plays detached and empty with such conviction, and channels something of an inner-Philip Seymour Hoffman in "Owning Mahowny," showing his character's complete fulfillment when obsessing over his job and his work.
This is one of the Gyllenhaal performances that will be remembered for his career.Out of common sense, this story may lead its main character to a moral about how much he is taking this job too far, probably destroying his humanity.
In addition, Riz Ahmed's Rick serves as Louis' gullible, clueless "employee" who just wants to escape the dispiriting state of homelessness and finally earn a living, completely unaware of the perilous and unethical situations he'll be cast in along his employer's selfishly ruthless path.This isn't the kind of film whose quality solely relies on a central performance because the narrative is just as cruelly gripping.
You shouldn't be enjoying this stuff.It's an exposition of entirely greed-induced (financial and ego driven) naked ambition that rivals Wolf of Wall Street for it's blithe abandon of normal ethical practice.Gyllenhaal, as Louis Bloom, almost cadaverous after his dramatic weight loss for the part, is as unsympathetic a movie character as you've seen in a very long time.
A loner, a drifter, a thief, unemployed (unemployable is the truth) and entirely without remorse - emotion for that matter - stumbles upon a freelance career as an, at first hapless then really rather good, ambulance chasing 'scene of the crime' news cameraman.Starting with motorway crashes and graduating to suburban crime scenes (where the threat of middle America being intruded upon by 'Hispanics' and other Liberal American ethnic minorities) he captures more and more challenging newsreel material that feeds the sensation-lust of an LA loser News Station's News Editor, Nina Romina, played deliciously by Rene Russo.Romina's sponsorship of, and belief in, the expert blagging of Bloom feeds his desire for greater success and indeed for Romina herself.
Certainly his hapless sidekick/assistant Rick, played by Riz Ahmed, has next to no chance in this little hothouse world of emotion-free ambition.Gyllenhaal's faux management style 'development' of Rick is at times darkly amusing but usually just plain vacuous and ironic given that he draws from real world self help and management lingo that's bad enough in the corporate world, but downright bizarre in this micro universe.The car chases are gripping edge of seat affairs, the plot, although it has holes in the final reel (quite big ones I felt) is nevertheless highly original and unfolds at a steady pace.The conclusion was, to my mind at least, a little disappointing, but aside from this a good, dark, star vehicle for Jake and possibly a step towards another best actor nomination..
Jake Gyllenhaal brings the performance of his career to this disturbing and compelling film that follows Lou Bloom in his quest to become the best at his newfound job no matter what the consequences may be.
The screenplay and direction from this film are brilliant, and they would be enough reasons to make it worthy of an enthusiastic recommendation, but the main pro from Nightcrawler is Jake Gyllenhaal's monumental performance, which perfectly allows us to see an intelligent and organized psychopath quickly advancing in an unethical but legal (most of the time) business which is designed for people with null empathy for other human beings.
In conclusion, Nightcrawler is an extraordinary thriller with an excellent screenplay, perfect direction and great performances (besides of Gyllenhaal and Russo, I would also like to mention the perfect works from Riz Ahmed and the great Bill Paxton).
This film essentially tells the story of an ambitious and somewhat psychotic news video freelancer (played by Jake Gyllenhall) who will do anything, literally, to make his way in the world and be successful and a media editor (played by Rene Russo) who,in her own world of news casting, also has few if any scruples when it comes to her career and reputation.
Put the two together and you get an escalating set of events in which the video freelancer goes to greater and greater extremes to film shocking scenes of crime, encouraged along by the media editor who is paying for his results.What makes the film more interesting than just another action drama is the social commentary and the character studies.
she needs him.Gilroy's script is sharp and intense, finding a strong plot to hang it on (it's still a neo-noir ultimately, with crimes on going on at LA at night, shot with a strong eye by Robert Elswit), and yet, for me, it works best as a character study.
It's a movie that challenges the viewer to go where this character does, to squirm, to recognize what is in this person as being something in the real world.Nightcrawler takes a risk to show this character - a cross perhaps between Daniel Plainview and Rupert Pupkin - and explore what happens when Capitalistic ambitions (and on a more we've-seen-this-before level 'if it bleeds it leads' critical pieces) go to/past their limits.
Every shot is perfectly done, the editing is sharp, the score nails the tone of the movie at every opportunity, and the film has just the right lighting to create an aura of creepiness that you still want to pursue.But it is the performance of Jake Gyllenhaal that makes Nightcrawler a discussion for the water-cooler.
Nightcrawler takes the characters, their motivations and their will and ups the ante by a hundred, giving us two 'protagonists' who test the viewer's boundaries on what they perceive as entertaining, and what they perceive as flat- out disturbing.The film centres around Lou (Jake Gyllenhaal); an incredibly diligent, hardworking man, who also happens to be a petty thief.
Lou believes this a good way to make some money, and goes out, buys a camera and a police scanner, and begins to shoot crime scenes of his own, whilst forming a professional relationship with a news director (Rene Russo) who appreciates Lou's commitment, drive and work ethic.Nightcrawler is at once both an immediately horrifying film, but one that is hard to look away from, just like the scenes that Lou and his assistant Rick are shooting to sell off to news agencies.
Part of this is due to Jake Gyllenhaal's performance, which is transformative, smart and entirely horrid (in the best way possible), and part of this is down the sensational writing, also provided by Gilroy, who provides a voice for this insane individual.To maintain a semblance of normality, Lou adopts a fake smile; a persona that carries through the entirety of the film.
Which you may almost believe by the end of this adrenaline rush of a film.Despite Lou's obvious sociopathic nature, we still root for him as he rides around the streets of Los Angeles, intent on getting to a crime scene first and grabbing the best angles achievable.
Jake Gyllenhaal gives the performance of his career as a man trying to crawl to the top of his game in the dark gritty media underworld of news footage peddling,.Nightcrawler is visually striking, the night streets of LA have probably not looked this good since Drive thanks to fantastic camera work and an excellent directorial debut from Dan Gilroy.
Driven Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) learns how to get there early and how to sell the footage to a station.Nightcrawlers is an expert thriller about footage jockeys and the ethics of manipulating news.
The film follows Lou Bloom (an emaciated Jake Gyllenhaal), an anti-social and driven man desperate for work who stumbles upon the world of "nightcrawlers" – freelance camera crews who film footages of car accidents, fires, shootings and all sorts of mayhem to sell to the local TV news.
Gilroy skilfully balances the dark comedy, thriller and satirical elements in the film, giving us a thematically-rich and suspenseful dive into the abyss that will surely stay with you long after the credits have rolled.There is an abundance of unsympathetic characters in the film, from Rene Russo's twisted TV producer to the fellow nightcrawlers Lou crosses paths with who will stop at nothing to exploit tragedy in hopes of making ends meet and surviving in a cutthroat society.
It's not just about being the first to reach the scene of the crime, it's about creating a story so shocking it would be impossible for people to turn away from.Jake Gyllenhaal gives a mesmerizing and disturbing career-best performance as one of the most memorable characters of the year.
Jake Gyllenhaal did a great job and I wouldn't be shocked if the right people thought he was Oscar worthy, but this film made me want to back away from the theater slowly.Louis Bloom is the person smart people cross the street to get away from.
Even one of my favorites along with Jake's other film End of Watch.The story to Nightcrawler is fantastic, running around trying to get news footage.
This is one of the best films I've watched in a long time - the script, the acting, the cinematography, and the direction is all excellent and Jake Gyllenhaal plays his role to perfection.
For me this film was all about this character though there are excellent points made on the way the news media work, how people like quick fix horror stories than any news of real substance and Lou Bloom(Gyllenhaal) is only feeding this beast.
This movie exposes the perverse nature of human entertainment and competition right in front of us, and while you might think it's something that won't affect you, this movie makes it apparent that no one is truly safe from the hands of those determined to get what they want.Set in the dumpy outskirts of Los Angeles, the main character, Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), is a lone man who is tight on funds and looking for a job.
Jake Gyllenhaal gives an excellent performance as Lou Bloom, one of the most compelling on-screen manipulators I've seen in a long time..
I am beyond proud of the work that Jake Gyllenhaal has been doing lately with his performance in the film "Prisoners", "Enemy", and most recently, "Nightcrawler".
What I enjoyed most was that at times I didn't feel like I was watching a movie at all because Bloom's character is too real; there are people like him who really do exist, which scary as hell!
The writing, directing and acting of this movie concentrated on perfecting the characters especially Bloom and Nina (the news director played by Rene Russo) while keeping the ambiance and use of graphics neutral.
Mr Gyllenhaal nails the role in a way that reminds of Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver (Robert DeNiro was 33 at the time - the same age as Jake now).Three other movies came to mind while watching this: Network (the lack of a conscience approach to ratings), Drive (the stylistic camera work and loner lead character), and Body Double (a fascinating Brian DePalma film from years ago).
Jake Gyllenhaal plays Louis Bloom, a conniving manipulator who is more character than personality, both smart (even though he doesn't come from a "proper education") and psychotic (he'll do whatever he needs to get ahead), in a performance so precise we always know what's going on in his head and his motivation (business, capitalism) so haunting he almost disappears as an actor.
The film itself almost makes you forget you're watching a movie from cinematography mixed with shaky-cam ("steady hands") so purposefully and editing that builds into an edge-of-your-seat climax culminating itself with a car chase of the like I haven't seen in years (even if it is still overly-edited).If this flick were made in the '80s, we would get sequel after sequel with new actors playing the main nightcrawler, but as the genesis film surely warrants a dozen rip-offs of an idea this great, this one will stay fresh in our minds for a long time..
The film features Jake Gyllenhaal in an award worthy performance, as the lead character, and also stars Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed and Bill Paxton.
Nightcrawler follows a Los Angeleno with no conscious (redundant?), Jake Gyllenhaal, as he finds his professional calling as a "stringer," someone who films accidents and violent crimes and then sells the footage to the morning news.
Russo and Riz Ahmed (as Bloom's assistant Rick) are really the only other two main characters in the movie and they all deserve accolades for their work here.As much as NIGHTCRAWLER is the tale of one psycho's rise to the top of his game, it's also a commentary on local news and the lengths to which they'll go to keep people tuning in.
You follow Lou Bloom, a man who goes from one payout to the next in a variety of illegal ways, until one night he discovers he has an unmatched talent for Nichtcrawling, which is the filming of crime scenes and violent acts for the seedy underworld of the late night news.
The whole movie essentially follows his journey up the ladder of the Nightcrawling profession, in fact I don't think there's a single scene in the film which he doesn't appear in, as the other cast members really do play supporting roles for the main even that is Bloom.
Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Lou Bloom, a driven young man desperate for work who discovers the high- speed world of L.A. crime journalism.
Jake Gyllenhaal, as Lou Bloom, creates a memorable character in "Nightcrawler", reminiscent of the intensity of Deniro's role in "Taxi Driver".
As a result, the film turns out to be engaging and sort of a real procedural from a journalistic eye.Jake Gyllenhaal is terrific and totally into the character throughout the movie.
The movie is led by a sturdy, cold and dark titular character, the ambitious and sociopathic Lou Bloom played by The Academy Award Nominee Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko, Brokeback Mountain, End of Watch) in his careers best performance, a strong supportive role by Rene Russo and Riz Ahmed.
In Dan Gilroy's powerful first feature Nightcrawler, Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a free-lance photographer who prowls the streets of Los Angeles at night looking for disaster footage he can sell to TV news networks looking for sensationalism to attract viewers.
Jake Gyllenhaal lead this movie with a tremendous solo effort, to create, to be honest the quite creepy character of Lou Bloom.