Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Bill Paxton, Marco Rodriguez, Riz Ahmed, James Huang, Michael Papajohn, Kent Shocknek, Pat Harvey, Sharon Tay, Rick Garcia, Leah Fredkin, Bill Seward, Rick Chambers, Jonny Coyne, Kiff VandenHeuve, Price Carson, Michael Hyatt, Ann Cusack.
“On television, it all looks so real” – the damning words of a high functioning sociopath in charge of a camera or the unhinged thoughts of those who peddle the images in which gore, distress and the unfamiliar suffering directly into the world’s living rooms under the designation of news but in many cases is the cold white furnace that fuels a disturbing and unavoidable thriller.
Nightcrawler sees Jake Gyllenhall, in perhaps his most personally demanding film since his breathtaking breakthrough piece Donnie Darko, as the sociopathic Louis Bloom who stumbles upon a career in filming the wreckage and fall out of life in the hours of darkness of the heaving metropolis of L.A. From petty criminal trying to score enough money to survive to a man in charge of a camera and a penchant for understanding far too much about how people tick and how to manipulate them is not something that anybody should aspire too but in the flick of an eye, the quick talk of a man who knows how to push a button to get the desired response, Jake Gyllenhall gives a performance of such creepy proportions that it is in many ways a mirroring of Robert Di Nero in Taxi Driver.
Whilst Robert Di Nero’s classic character was one in which life had beaten him to the point of breaking, to the point where the violence oozed out of him in anguish and fear, Jake Gyllenhall’s Louis Bloom only once lets mask slip and that makes it more terrifying. It is to be considered that a psychopath who is driven to extremes by society is perhaps less dangerous than the high functioning sociopath who bends the wind to his favour. In either case, Jake Gyllenhall is terrific and shockingly terrorising at the same time.
The news though, the constant demand to be locally or internationally entertained, to have the outraged indignation thrust down the throats of the viewing public before they have had time to pour their cereal out and get strung out on their first cup of coffee is one that seems to dominate society wherever you go. To have the topic of conversation being the latest murder or carjacking, house fire or multiple death peppering the work place and bar rather than the result of a date or the games result the previous night is one in which Nightcrawler openly holds a mirror up to the way society now lives and dares it to complain that it is untrue.
The manipulation of the media and the manoeuvring of the fear is what drives advertisers’ and television ratings through the roof. The question of what someone will shoot for money is bought home in the final chilling scenes, the media and the sociopath in bed together makes for viewing that is compulsive and destructive.
Nightcrawler is a film of sheer intensity, impossible to look away from and one in which the feeling of being used and abused by the media is never higher.
Ian D. Hall