Review of Nightcrawler (2014) by Michael P — 13 Jun 2015

Louis Bloom scavenges to survive until he stumbles upon the career of filming the news as a freelance and selling to a news station. The crux of the story may seem somewhat mundane, even when things start getting intense as moral boundaries are tested, this could have been an average movie. However, with great directing by Dan Gilroy and an excellent performance by Jake Gynllenhaal, this film becomes exceptional.

From the beginning you are interested in Lou, he is courteous and intelligent but as he shows from his first encounter with a person, a darker side lies just beneath the surface. Jake Gynllenhaal does an excellent job of portraying Lou, being respectable one minute only to lash out the next. Lou is a really interesting character that continues to push the boundaries of his world, like only a sociopath could, and although you may not agree with his actions, sometimes not even able to fathom the ease with which he makes them, it just makes him even more so one of the most interesting characters ever.

Rene Russo plays a desperate newsroom director and Riz Ahmed - a homeless man desperate for a job, both play their characters well and it's no surprise that their best scenes are when Lou slowly turns away from being a friend to taking full advantage of them. Bill Paxton is his usual scene stealing self, adding some humour to a dark movie while also giving us the media mantra that this film takes to its logical end, "if it bleeds, it leads.".

This film not only delivers one of the most intriguing characters ever, it also portrays the media for what is has become, obsessed with ratings, following in the footsteps of other great news movies like Network (1976). I also found that its follow through of the American Dream was interesting because although we have had flawed protagonists, a la Henry Hill or Jordan Belfort, I feel like Louis Bloom creates a class of his own.

This film may be hard to watch over and over again, because there is no character that you are constantly rooting for. Lou's decisions left me walking away from the film conflicted as to if he was actually the protagonist or not. However this film is definitely one of the most thrilling movies of the year and one of the most interesting. A must see movie of 2014.