A young man stumbles upon the underground world of L.A. freelance crime journalism.
This creepy-crawly character is a personification of the cynicism, manipulation and inhumanity currently prevalent in TV news: he's a protagonist apt for our age.
Director Gilroy, the scriptwriter of Bourne Legacy, may not be ripping the lid off shady newsgathering, but he has crafted a film that is properly creepy.
Sharp, dark, satirical and bone-rattlingly thrilling, with a career-peak turn from Jake Gyllenhaal. It’s this year’s Drive.
Switch off that television and head out to the cinema: Gyllenhaal is sensational headlining a pitch-black satire with its finger on the pulse.
A monster movie for the modern age.
Skin crawling stuff.
Unfortunately Nightcrawler doesn’t actually have much to say in the end, serving up the same finger-wagging observations about compromised ethics and falling standards that have been a staple of media movies from Medium Cool to Network to Broadcast News.
Nightcrawler is a slithery film on which it is hard to get a solid grip. It straddles genres, shifts perspectives and tones.
Gilroy maintains the dramatic tension and satirical fizz to the very last second and doggedly maintains the focus on Lou himself, with all his needling and posturing and bullying. There is something almost physically pleasurable in seeing an actor driving a role as confidently as this.
The more we learn of him the more monstrous he seems and the film is a worthy addition to landmark tales of journalistic ethics such as the Kirk Douglas classic Ace In The Hole and the Oscar-winning Network.
Gilroy slightly blows it with a crowd-pleasing climactic chase, but this is a properly grown-up entertainment; and it contains the most memorable new monster in sight, being the most abjectly human.
Shot as a neon-soaked disturbia Los Angeles is a character in itself – a twilight zone as eerily disembodied as Bloom himself – but it’s Bloom, superbly inhabited by Gyllenhaal, who stays with you: a chilling icon of a troubling age.
Nightcrawler: the story of TV's seedy underbelly
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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