Review of Nightcrawler (2014) by Art S — 10 Aug 2015

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as a creepy guy who is likely to have Asperger's or some other autism spectrum disorder who builds himself a career as a "nightcrawler", a guy with a video camera who takes freelance crime scene videos for the TV news.

Most of the footage here is at night and it's slick with a pulsating score (but not quite Michael Mann slick). Gyllenhaal is also slick in a robotic way but with no empathy for people and a cold hearted willingness to manipulate them for his own ends.

That's probably all you need to know. This is director Dan (brother of Tony) Gilroy's first directorial outing after a number of undistinguished screenplays. His wife, Rene Russo, stars as a TV news producer who desperately needs crime and accident footage to boost the ratings of her station; good to see her again (since roles for older women are so rare), but it's a one-note role.

Bill Paxton is here too with not that much to do. Riz Ahmed has the only human-seeming character (as Gyllenhaal's assistant), almost more than one-dimensional. So, in the end, this is a character study with a not-so-new message about the bloodthirsty news media that wants to be a thriller (and does feel thrilling at times) but, alas, it is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, like so many others of its ilk.