Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed, and Bill Paxton
Directed by: Dan Gilroy
Screenplay by: Dan Gilroy
Something tells me that the main guy in this film is a little desperate for a job.
Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is looking for work. He's kind of socially awkward and can be creepy at times. Why? He's a little obsessed with what he finds that he is going to do. One night, he stumbles upon a fiery car crash on an LA highway and watches as a freelance news film crew, headed by a guy we later meet named Joe Loder (Bill Paxton), arrives to film officers pull a woman from the burning wreckage.
This event makes Lou decide to be a freelance crime scene videographer so he can sell footage to local news stations for profit, becoming Joe Loder's competition. Within a few days, Lou has a basic video camera, police radio, and a partner, Rick (Riz Ahmed), and is out filming crime scenes at night. He starts selling the footage to Nina Romina (Rene Russo), the news director for KWLA, the lowest rated news station in Los Angeles. Nina is often hesitant to take Lou's footage, but Lou eventually realizes that her job may one day depend on the footage he is bringing her. So, he has to get really good footage that can often be quite graphic.
One night, there is a home invasion in a wealthy neighborhood. Lou and Rick find out about it really quickly and arrive on the scene well before LAPD shows up. Suspicious yet? Lou captures the suspects leaving the scene and a great deal of the crime scene as well. He demands a great deal of money in exchange for the footage as well as credit for the footage. It's graphic footage that will ultimately catch the attention of detectives, and may very well get him into legal trouble. He's put himself in a very tough situation, so you'll just have to see the film in order to find out what happens to him.
The story at times feels rather flimsy and poorly put together. There's not nearly enough character development to make audiences feel any attachment toward characters. They are flat, boring, people about whom it is difficult to care, especially Lou. He is very driven to elevate his production "company" to the next level, which is admirable, but he is so ambitious that he will do anything to get there, even if it means being a creep to everyone around him.
There's one part of the story where it is so unclear that I am still scratching my head about it trying to figure out what it means. Nina tells Lou to "think of our newscast as a screaming woman running with her throat cut." Maybe I'm just thinking too hard about it or I don't know enough about the news industry to know what she means by this, but in any sense, I don't have the faintest notion of what this means, and yet this idea seems to be central to the story.
The acting in the film isn't totally terrific except for Jake Gyllenhaal. He is at the top of his game and this is most certainly one of his better acting performances. He brings a great sense of eeriness to his character that make him seem like the kind of person that audiences would want to stay as far away from as possible. There does not seem to be much in the way of chemistry between him and the other actors though. He doesn't work terribly well with Riz Ahmed, who plays his partner on this film crew, but he works somewhat better with Rene Russo.
Something fun about this film is all the Los Angeles references. This is a film in which the location plays such an important role that it feels as if it is a character itself. Growing up in Los Angeles, I learned much of the geography of the city, which is something a lot of films that take place in Los Angeles get wrong. Nightcrawler not only gets the geography correct, but so correct that it makes stereotypes about residents of Los Angeles seem true. Ever notice how people from LA talk about the highways all the time? There's a scene in which they talk about highways and which ones to take to get to a crime scene for a good thirty seconds or so. Audiences watching this film who are either living in Los Angeles currently or are originally from there might notice these stereotypes a little better and as a warning, they might hit a little close to home.
But don't let that get you down. Nightcrawler is an intense, high action, and fast paced film that will have you on edge much of the time. I give it a B.
Directed by: Dan Gilroy
Screenplay by: Dan Gilroy
Something tells me that the main guy in this film is a little desperate for a job.
Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is looking for work. He's kind of socially awkward and can be creepy at times. Why? He's a little obsessed with what he finds that he is going to do. One night, he stumbles upon a fiery car crash on an LA highway and watches as a freelance news film crew, headed by a guy we later meet named Joe Loder (Bill Paxton), arrives to film officers pull a woman from the burning wreckage.
This event makes Lou decide to be a freelance crime scene videographer so he can sell footage to local news stations for profit, becoming Joe Loder's competition. Within a few days, Lou has a basic video camera, police radio, and a partner, Rick (Riz Ahmed), and is out filming crime scenes at night. He starts selling the footage to Nina Romina (Rene Russo), the news director for KWLA, the lowest rated news station in Los Angeles. Nina is often hesitant to take Lou's footage, but Lou eventually realizes that her job may one day depend on the footage he is bringing her. So, he has to get really good footage that can often be quite graphic.
One night, there is a home invasion in a wealthy neighborhood. Lou and Rick find out about it really quickly and arrive on the scene well before LAPD shows up. Suspicious yet? Lou captures the suspects leaving the scene and a great deal of the crime scene as well. He demands a great deal of money in exchange for the footage as well as credit for the footage. It's graphic footage that will ultimately catch the attention of detectives, and may very well get him into legal trouble. He's put himself in a very tough situation, so you'll just have to see the film in order to find out what happens to him.
The story at times feels rather flimsy and poorly put together. There's not nearly enough character development to make audiences feel any attachment toward characters. They are flat, boring, people about whom it is difficult to care, especially Lou. He is very driven to elevate his production "company" to the next level, which is admirable, but he is so ambitious that he will do anything to get there, even if it means being a creep to everyone around him.
There's one part of the story where it is so unclear that I am still scratching my head about it trying to figure out what it means. Nina tells Lou to "think of our newscast as a screaming woman running with her throat cut." Maybe I'm just thinking too hard about it or I don't know enough about the news industry to know what she means by this, but in any sense, I don't have the faintest notion of what this means, and yet this idea seems to be central to the story.
The acting in the film isn't totally terrific except for Jake Gyllenhaal. He is at the top of his game and this is most certainly one of his better acting performances. He brings a great sense of eeriness to his character that make him seem like the kind of person that audiences would want to stay as far away from as possible. There does not seem to be much in the way of chemistry between him and the other actors though. He doesn't work terribly well with Riz Ahmed, who plays his partner on this film crew, but he works somewhat better with Rene Russo.
Something fun about this film is all the Los Angeles references. This is a film in which the location plays such an important role that it feels as if it is a character itself. Growing up in Los Angeles, I learned much of the geography of the city, which is something a lot of films that take place in Los Angeles get wrong. Nightcrawler not only gets the geography correct, but so correct that it makes stereotypes about residents of Los Angeles seem true. Ever notice how people from LA talk about the highways all the time? There's a scene in which they talk about highways and which ones to take to get to a crime scene for a good thirty seconds or so. Audiences watching this film who are either living in Los Angeles currently or are originally from there might notice these stereotypes a little better and as a warning, they might hit a little close to home.
But don't let that get you down. Nightcrawler is an intense, high action, and fast paced film that will have you on edge much of the time. I give it a B.
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