Nightcrawler

This is a classic film, not just because every scene and line is casually beautiful and devoid of extraneous touches, but because its tone is mercilessly exact.

There’s tremendous social and moral texture throughout the drama, but the socio-economic commentary of the movie is fabric, not heavy handed accessory. And the provocative ethical breaches—savage and scathing in the latter half—give the movie its delectable and wicked bite.

Gilroy vividly evokes both the LA exteriors and newsroom interiors, and the action sequences are fraught with tension.

From a subdued start Nightcrawler unfurls into a ghoulish and wickedly funny satire on journalism, the job market and self-help culture.

Despite the familiarity of its themes — the bottom-feeding news media; the pathology born of extreme isolation and a little too much online time; the American can-do spirit, perverted into something poisonous — Gilroy's clever, skeezy little noir is worth a prowl.

Dan Gilroy's directorial debut only offers a familiar vision of today's newsman and producers as misery peddlers, and callow ratings slaves bordering on the monstrous.

After a few minutes you know everything about Louis you’re going to know; the only surprise in Nightcrawler is the level of grotesqueness it achieves. There’s more insight (and entertainment) in an average sketch from the old SCTV series; I kept imagining Joe Flaherty’s horror host Count Floyd climbing out of his coffin and chanting, “Oooh, that Louis, he’s veh-ry skerrrr-y, kiddies — ahwoooooooo!”

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

"Nightcrawler" is a creepy, quirky thriller that delivers an entertaining mix of drama but is a slick and shallow movie and like it's protagonist desperate to be something more. Dan Gilroy who doesn't have the talent that his brother Tony Gilroy quite has in terms of storytelling creates something that could've been a few drafts away from being something interesting but only taps the surface level. The movie starts with Louis Bloom (which is probably the worst name for character in a dark thriller) a small time thief who thinks he can get away with everything who is caught stealing metal from a Los Angeles railyard. He knocks the guard unconscious, steals his watch and leaves with stolen manhole covers, fencing, and other materials. Jake Gyllenhaal plays this guy like a deranged overambitious but the film doesn't show us is why he's always like this. While trying to sell the materials at a scrap yard, Lou asks for a job, but the foreman, who has already been questioned by police looking for the manhole covers, refuses to hire a thief. While driving home in his beat-up Toyota Tercel, Lou sees cop car approaching a car crash on the highway and pulls over. Stringers—freelance photojournalists—arrive and record two police officers pulling a woman from the burning wreckage. One of the stringers, Joe Loder (Bill Paxton) explains to Lou that they sell their footage to local news stations. Inspired by this, Lou steals an expensive bicycle and pawns it for a camcorder and a police radio scanner. You immediately see this guy who has always cut corners in life and you wonder what's made him like this or why was he born a sociopath but it his makes him feel hollow as a character After two unsuccessful attempts at recording incidents, Lou records the aftermath of a fatal carjacking and sells the footage to KWLA 6. The morning news director, Nina Romina (Rene Russo) tells him the station is especially interested in footage of "graphic" accidents and violent crime in affluent, predominantly white areas. Lou hires an assistant, Rick (Riz Ahmed), a young homeless ma desperate for money. To give his footage more impact, Lou tampers with crime scenes, in one case moving a body to get a better camera angle. As Lou's work gains traction, he buys better equipment and a faster car (a red Dodge Challenger). This tackles some interesting subjects but it's ridiculous tone and underwritten characters gets in the way of it's execution, there's a scene 34 minutes in where Lou and Nina are talking and explains why he keeps annoyingly recites platitudes and he memorizes a lot of stuff online and took an online business course that you have lifetime goals for starting a business and why you want to pursue it and then launches into this spiel and recites the questions the course asked him and says "I recently remade my list and television news might be something I love." Okay this guy literally just discovered this profession days ago by happenstance and he really believes his own **** basically. He then goes and sits at the news anchor desk and then James Newton Howard score swells and it just feels so rote like it's telling us to feel good about him when all his choices have been incoherent with personality. This film also stumbles with some of the news room material especially involving Rene Russo's character a former new anchor now a nightside news director at first Nina comes across as Faye Dunaway's character in "Network" but from the beginning she's so blatantly unethical and oblivious to Louis' insanity that she eventually becomes a caricature in the last scene. One of the reason I never bought the Nina Romina character is because she's supposed to be this washed up anchor who hadn't achieved heights in journalistic career is willing to cross the line to get better coverage and be on top Rene Russo is too charming to play this kinda role. I didn't know she and Dan Gilroy were married before this and he didn't have much creative vision because he used so much of his brother Tony's crew to make this movie which kinda shows the director really miscast his own wife. He even cast his niece Carolyn Gilroy, the daughter of the editor his other brother John Gilroy as KWLA 6 employee Jenny.

Wtf was that. A guy like this shouldn't have a happy ending. **** ending as far as I'm concernened. The movie doesn't encite any reason why this guy is sociopathic. We're just expected to go along, but even in the most sociopathic characters, there's some humanity that made them that way. I think the filmmakers missed the truth of the movie and i wish went for something more daring. Instead they scapegoated and sold out for something safe. Nightcrawler is an exciting wannabe attempt at a nifty thriller. But falls flat on its ass and leaves you with nothing to chew on.

This has a very slow burn. The lead character is highly unlikeable. As none of the characters are engaging and the story is fairly uneventful and predictable I really didn't enjoy this film, it's not badly made or anything but it is dull. Maybe I'm not the target audience but I had to watch it at 1.25x just to avoid turning it off. The finale car chase was pretty cool but not worth the build up. The ending was massively unsatisfying.

I'm just disappointed with this film. I think that is a much better made and more interesting.********************************************************