Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed, Bill Paxton
Director: Dan Gilroy
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars
(Spoilers Ahead) Then there are films like Nightcrawler that make that pickiness all worth it, since they show the crazy, bizarre ways that the movies can keep your mouth gaping. This film is easily one of the most frightening, realistic movies I've seen all year, and absolutely left me gasping me for air as it finished, closing with one of the creepier takes on modern society I've seen in a long while.
The film is about a man who seems to come out of nowhere named Lou Bloom (Gyllenhaal), a fella seemingly down-on-his-luck who finds himself in the right place at the right time when he stumbles across a particularly bloody car accident. While there, he sees a nightcrawler (played by Bill Paxton) who videotapes the carnage to sell to a local news media channel. Bloom spots an opportunity to use his meticulous ambition as a way to make money, and quickly sets up an operation where he videotapes the results of car accidents, burglaries, and armed robberies and sells it to a local news station run by a frequently harried woman named Nina (Russo).
The film envelopes the audience slowly, not quite giving us everything that Lou is up to right at first glance. This is Jake Gyllenhaal we're talking about, and we, like the audience, want to believe the best in this handsome man, seemingly a little strange but probably all right. That's what past Gyllenhaal characters have taught us, after all, in films like Zodiac and Prisoners. Lou, though, isn't a kook with a heart of gold-he's Daniel Plainview with a camcorder. We slowly watch as Lou begins to manipulate the news, frequently breaking into people's homes and moving around bodies to get the perfect shot. Eventually Lou stumbles across what appears to be dynamite for his career-a three-body armed break-in in a wealthy section of Los Angeles, it's the sort of news story that would gain national attention, not just be part of the local beat, and he aids and abets the killers by not giving all of the information over to the police, instead eventually leading the police to a high-speed police chase that results in the deaths of Lou's partner and several police officers, as well as the criminals. The movie ends with Lou, now a considerably more profitable businessman, getting away with murder and training others to go out in the night to find a story at no matter what cost.
There are so many different angles to take this review, but the first is the way that it adds to films like The Bling Ring and Gone Girl in the way that it skewers our "if it bleeds it leads" mentality. There's a scene where Nina goes through what she's looking for, wanting some sort of crime against a white person, preferably at the hands of a minority, and also in an upscale neighborhood. It's of course an acknowledgement of something we all know to be true-the local news in their crime coverage is pretty much as blatantly racist as one can get, but it's also a continual skewer against all of us. The reality is that while we may poo-poo the news and the way it leads with violence, we continue to watch it and obsess over violent shootings and kidnapped white women with the same tenacity of our favorite television shows. People like Nancy Grace are wildly famous for a reason, and if you watch the nightly news or The Today Show with even a mild consistence you know that these sorts of stories are at the top of their "coverage" lists. This film, however, gets to the awful truth of such a matter-someone actually is there filming these car accidents and shootings, essentially creating snuff films for the masses.
There's also the story of Lou himself. As I mentioned above, it's unnerving because Lou is played by the handsome Gyllenhaal. You see the way that people, particularly Rene Russo's Nina, want to give him the benefit of the doubt-there's so much persistence there, likability, and well, handsomeness. Look at how the internet fell in love with a handsome prisoner from a mugshot-people are weirdly forgiving of good-looking villains, and that's what makes Lou's quick ascent so terrifying-it's so believable.
The performances in this film are terrific. Gyllenhaal, who has been just aces playing unknowable weirdos since his Oscar-nominated turn as Jack Twist, notches one of his best pieces of work with Lou, a phantom of a human being whose evil creeps up on the audience until it's too late. His equal is Rene Russo, who has one of the most complicated characters I've seen onscreen all year. Russo's Nina is a conundrum, and one that writer-director Dan Gilroy (her husband in real life) knows he's playing. As the second lead and the other movie star headlining the film, Russo is supposed to be our reprieve from Lou. She's supposed to fall a bit under his spell, maybe get to the verge of being a terrible person, but ultimately redeem society by throwing herself on the grenade. She may lose her job, but she'll bring justice against the horrible villain.
Except that's not what happens at all. Gilroy, like he does with Gyllenhaal's casting, plays with our perceptions. Nina initially seems like the person who will save us-she's also beautiful, also on the edge, but seemingly a good person, and he keeps our hope for her alive longer. We see that she is willing to defy Lou when she needs to, but ultimately (in one of the most devastatingly disturbing sequences I've seen all year at the movies) she succumbs to his sexual advances after he blackmails her into being his lover, knowing that she has little choice in the matter if she wants to continue her job. This is a woman who has defined herself by a failing career, and Lou knows this and plays into her panic about being middle-aged and having no other successes. We initially confuse Nina for being good, but what we soon find is that she's simply weak and buckles under pressure the moment things get rough. As the audience surrogate, she makes those of us in the theater all the more terrified-she was supposed to be the one who represented "us" onscreen, and even she fell. Would we do the same? This is a tough act for Russo to pull-together (there's so much timing and conflicting goals in her performance), but she does so with amazing precision. Frequently I kept thinking of Ann Dowd and her terrific work in Compliance, a film about someone craving praise who does terrible things to receive it, using authority as an excuse; here we have Nina using the excuse that "I have to have a job" to throw away her morality, enabling a sociopath in the process. In regard to Russo, please tell me that some other casting director saw this and will now give her something to do other than wear heavy dresses and have three lines in Thor movies (I mean, Dowd followed up her work with that amazing performance in The Leftovers-Russo deserves just as good).
Those are my thoughts on this truly effective film, but what are yours? Do you like the neo-noir look, or did the violence get too much for you? What do you think about Gyllenhaal and Russo-career best, or just another great performance in strong careers? And what aspect of modern day media would you like shattered to bits next? Share in the comments!
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