NIGHTCRAWLER MOVIE REVIEW
Nightcrawler stars the always-welcome Jake Gyllenhaal as a man of pure ambition as he climbs the ranks of recording local news footage, but it’s done in the most unsettling way possible. Back in 2014, when I was volunteering for the Carmel International Film Festival, not only did I get the chance to see this movie, but also before it’s main release. A couple months later I downloaded it off of iTunes, and I started to regret missing the chance of not seeing the film’s crisp shots and rich characters on the big screen.
Getting right into it, the Nightcrawler’s strongest aspect is Jake Gyllenhaal’s character, Louis Bloom, and appropriately centers the film around him. Gyllenhaal gives off such an eerie arora, it grabs the film and throws it from the thriller genre to something more akin to horror. When first watching this, some scenes gave me more dread and fear than what most horror pictures would provide. Even if the rest of the film was awful (spoiler: it’s not) it would still be worthing giving a shot solely because of Gyllenhaal’s performance.
One key aspect that shapes character are their environment (Shaun of Shaun of the Dead wouldn’t quite work as well in a film like Schindler’s List), and there may not have been a better fit for Louis Bloom than the City of Angels. Decades from now, Nightcrawler will be revered upon as a perfect time capsule of the seedy 2010’s L.A., much like Drive, but much more naturalistic. Drive is a quite stylized, and that perfectly fits the world that Nicolas Winding Refn was trying to create, but Nightcrawler is supposed to take place in our world, and that’s what makes the film feel so much more intense, the fact that there may be more Louis Blooms out there.
I would not say that Nightcrawler is more style over substance, because the substance is in its characters, but there still is not much substance in the actual story itself. Its plot isn’t complicated or anything grand, but it doesn’t need to be. Now, the style aspect comes from the dialogue and cinematography. They do not stand out like Tarantino’s, but once again, Nightcrawler is supposed to feel real, so once you look into the visuals you see exactly how beautiful they are. Despite its rich darkness, the film is littered with crisp colors, never allowing itself to end up looking bleak. And the dialogue may not exactly be God-like, but there is plenty to chew on. That much is guaranteed with these characters. There is much more than sufficient dialogue, yet writer Dan Gilroy (whom I am watching closely to see what he pulls of next) keeps it all grounded.
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As far as flaws in Nightcrawler goes, there is one that could be argued: lack of character development. Aside from Rene Russo’s character, no one really changes in this film. Louis Bloom in the beginning of the movie is the same Louis Bloom at the end of the movie. But the movie deals with this in a such a way that I cannot count this as an actual issue. Rather than character development, Nightcrawler opts for character reveal. Bloom has a great introduction, but the audience receives radically new realizations about him throughout the film. The same goes for Riz Ahmed’s character, and his reveal to Bloom propels the entire third act of the movie.
Aided by its stellar cast and compelling writing, Nightcrawler is as grimy as a thriller can get while still feeling real, and it makes for one hell of a character study. A character study that is worth 9 out of 10 stars.
★★★★★★★★★☆