Mediocre Movie Club Movie Reviews

Nightcrawler

9/10/2015

B+
3.41

Nightcrawler confronts the viewer with the probable fact that the most ruthless are probably doing pretty well for themselves - Jon
Watching and listening to [Lou] spout MBA bullshit was fantastic - Bryan
I like the social criticism that news is basically porn, but it was just overdone - Shane

Substitute Review by Jon

Nightcrawler defies traditional movie vocab. It's very much a character study of Jake Gyllenhaal's Louis Bloom, but calling him a protagonist is far too kind. He's not an anti-hero either, as he's lacking in any truly redemptive qualities. This is the villain in the protagonist chair, something I'm not sure what to call. Dan Gilroy's debut film is a dark ride, daring the viewer to find the bottom of what Bloom is capable of.

Bloom is first depicted as a hustler, stealing scrap metal and fighting a security guard for his watch. He is hungry for a regular job, but his intense need to please is creepy and he speaks in corporate, motivational slogans. Potential bosses turn him away, justifiably. While driving down an LA expressway, he pulls over to gawk at a fiery car wreck, when an amateur film crew shows up with the intent of getting some juicy footage and selling it to the highest network bidder. Seeing the opportunity to make some money and be his own boss, Bloom buys equipment with the proceeds from a stolen bike and catches a carjacking on film. He sells it to Nina (Rene Russo), a morning news director at a low-rated station, and it's off to the races. With his highly flexible ethical code, Bloom is not above breaking into homes or altering crime scenes for better shots. As he experiences more success, he hires a low-paid assistant (Riz Ahmed) and negotiates a better deal with Nina, becoming increasingly megalomaniacal in his goals and methods.

Gyllenhaal is fantastic in the lead role, shaving his facial features down to sharp, gaunt edges with an intense, unblinking stare to match. All the books and articles his character has clearly read about how to influence people and sell one's talents are completely internalized, smothering any baser emotion he might otherwise feel from lust to rage. He still feels these, but phrases their expression in terms of partnerships and self-improvement. Bloom speaks in professional terms, but Gyllenhaal's eyes sell the dangerous animal within. Russo is a welcome casting choice in one of her best roles in years, deservedly coming back to prominence after a long period out of the spotlight. Her Nina is just as desperate for success as Bloom is, though she doesn't quite share his ruthlessness. She is his equal until very suddenly, she isn't. Russo sells the 100% position of strength Nina is operating in, and she again sells the creeping few percentage points of vulnerability that Bloom is able to use against her.

The big takeaway from Nightcrawler is essentially don't watch network news if all they're going to give their audience is crime. A deeply intelligent person, Bloom sees the vital service he provides to fear-mongers like Nina, who insist on broadcasting 'urban crime in suburban environments,' despite the fact that crime is uniformly down. Nina would be the villain if Bloom was less repulsive, but her miscreancy happens secondhand while Bloom is the one getting his hands dirty. Bloom also points out the misplaced share of each news half-hour dedicated to crime, as the impulse that dragged him into this line of work is one most other people are eager to indulge at a safer distance. He is this base impulse given life, the embodiment of voyeurism and rubber-necking deprived of empathy or human feeling.

Gilroy does a great job filming the several car chases in Nightcrawler, and since much of the job is waiting for something to happen, he films these long pauses with plenty of tension and looming catastrophe. His script is noticeably obsessed with titles, as Bloom tells people to call him Lou or Louis depending on who he's talking to, or other characters insist on being called the right position. This power dynamic game feeds right into Bloom's wheelhouse, letting him know the other person is playing the same game as he is, though they likely aren't living and breathing it to the same extent. I'm not sure if Gilroy's unwillingness to give Bloom a shred of sympathy is a mistake or an admirable commitment. There's no real arc for the character, as he's already horrible in frame one. The generic score is a missed opportunity, as the extra push from a better one would further augment the tension and the cool factor. Was Cliff Martinez or equivalent busy?

Nightcrawler's mostly despicable characters operating in a mostly despicable fashion makes for an uncomfortable but worthy experience. Though the characters' are largely unrelatable, that doesn't mean they aren't interesting. With great lead performances, a daring and raw script, and tense direction, this is a world worth dipping a toe into. Full immersion would be too depressing. B

29 Comments

Admin

9/8/2015 11:15:59 pm

Saved for direct replies to the original review.

Sean

9/9/2015 08:41:32 pm

Can you explain you need for characters to receive comeuppance? As long as a bad person can reasonably get away with their bad deeds and progress into a rational next step position it's fine for me. While suspicious his reasoning to the cop that he was potentially sought by the criminals isn't so much of a stretch that he couldn't potentially get away with it isn't impossible. It's not like he's running the news station in the closing shot, he's just become a cleaner version of Bill Paxton's mayhem character and launched some more vans.

Jon

9/10/2015 12:40:58 am

Comeuppance and turnabout is just good, classic storytelling. A character decides they want something, and, depending on what kind of story it is, either struggles against an antagonistic world to get it (Pursuit of Happyness), or gets it through unsavory means and is brought down by their weakness (Scarface). Nightcrawler is Pursuit of Happyness if Will Smith's character acted like Tony Montana. If he beat his kid and killed his rivals, and still got the job at the end, then his bad behavior's been validated. I don't think Nightcrawler is a worse movie for going this very strange route, because I agree that its narratively tight and covers all its bases (maybe the cops could tell the important footage was edited, but there's surely another ready-to-go excuse there). I do think it's a nihilistic path that needed a better message or objective beyond the rote 'journalism is selling you fear' one.

There's no reason to think he isn't going to continue to manipulate crime scenes or put civilian/intern lives at risk. He's not in charge of the news station, sure, but he's already caused around half a dozen deaths, and will continue to be powerful enough to cause several more.

Bobby

9/10/2015 02:42:27 am

I don't at all see why there needs to be any reason to think he'd stop... I think a big part of the appeal here is that it isn't some happy classic storytelling with the comeuppance and yay happy ending. Sometimes bad behavior is validated, and successful by some measures.

9/11/2015 03:15:58 am

If someone who had been Skinner-boxed their entire life, with no sense of morality and dignity, sat down and watched Nightcrawler, they would think it had a happy ending. I agree that that complete lack of judgment is what makes the movie unique, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

Phil

9/15/2015 10:12:51 am

This was why I initially found your review confusing Kissel. You brought up all the points regarding how different Nightcrawler was, but never gave an opinion on them until here. The B makes more sense now. That said, I always feel a little weird knocking a movie b/c it doesn't fit "your values." Is it fair to drop Nightcrawler b/c Lou doesn't get his comeuppance? It's your perogative for sure, but I'm not sure I consider it "fair."

9/15/2015 04:07:50 pm

Yeah, this makes it feel like it couldn't have a good ending for you, Jon. You don't like the route they went with, even though it remained true to the character and the movie's aspects that set it apart... but if Lou did get his comeuppance, justice was served, whatever... wouldn't you then have to ding the movie for not sticking to what made it good and different in the first place, just to fit the expectation that bad always has to be trumped eventually?

Bryan

9/9/2015 12:08:35 am

The first 15 minutes of Nightcrawler were the worst. He was clueless and nothing about the beginning grabs the viewer.

As we progress with the story of Louis Bloom, I was mildly interested - like watching NCIS or the news. Neither are terribly engaging, but they aren't repulsive. The strangest direction in Nightcrawler was the hero music choice when Louis is writing down codes. It was off putting and almost as though we're celebrating chasing grotesqueness.

Louis' character is repulsive, but he is calculating and consistent. Watching and listening to him spout MBA bullshit was fantastic. Putting up with the local news wasn't enjoyable - I just didn't care about anyone at the station.

Was the restaurant where he hired his assistant the same one from Pulp Fiction? Looked familiar.
.
Too much like crime shows.
Nightcrawler was token news.
Should have gone deeper.

9/9/2015 12:13:31 am

B-

9/9/2015 02:20:19 am

'Should have gone deeper' into what? The state of local news? I'm only a little higher on the movie than you are, but I do think that if anything, it's too obvious on that front. 'A screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut' is an evocative image, but is not a subtle, show-don't-tell statement

9/9/2015 02:16:41 am

The above is a Letterboxd review and I avoid spoilers when writing those. Something I danced around is what the movie thinks about Lou. In most movies, Lou would get his comeuppance, but the complete absence of it is what makes Nightcrawler unique. In some interviews I've read, actors that play evil sociopaths talk about having to get into a head space where their actions are justified, either by their circumstances or their ideology. For Daniel Day Lewis, Bill the Butcher is the hero of Gangs of New York. The audience is free to judge, but well-written and well-acted antagonists have to act in ways that make sense to the character. Nightcrawler is one of the few movies I can think of where the director is on the antagonist's side, or whatever the dramatic term might be for Lou. I guess it's anti-hero, but that doesn't exactly feel right. In Taxi Driver, Scorsese understands Travis Bickle, but he doesn't condone his actions. Bickle's an anti-hero because he's trying to be better, though he fails miserably. A Clockwork Orange comes to mind as a possible ancestor. Whatever the term may be, the whole movie hinges on whether or not the viewer can get on board with Lou consistently succeeding.

One way the film mostly succeeds in threading its needle is by plunging Lou into a lowest-common-denominator world. I still think Rene Russo is great in her role, but I also don't know that a person in her position would talk so cynically about her job. I think broadly, everyone, no matter who they are, wants to think that they're the hero in their story, and no one thinks they're actively making the world worse. Everyone except for Nina, that is. Her coworker played by Teddy Chow-guh-guh can be the voice of journalistic integrity, but he doesn't have as much at stake as Nina. Integrity is cheap if the proponent risks nothing. By creating, with overbroad, didactic strokes, a fallen world, writer/director Dan Gilroy can position Lou as someone uniquely suited to thrive in a place where there aren't any standards of behavior. Lou's monstrous, but he's no less monstrous than a world that would allow someone like him to get to
the top.

Another way is by focusing so much on negotiation. People internally weigh their options and decide which emotion to value more, but with Lou, that takes place externally. Rick and Nina never sign a contract with him, and are free to walk away at any moment, but they value economic concerns above dignity and safety. Lou can sense this, and he places those intangible concerns against a dollar amount, and they take him up on it every time. Nina trades her self-respect (all the praise to Gilroy and his editor for not showing that sex scene) for the probable renewal of her 2-year contract. Rick trades the presumed, but unlikely receipt of several thousand dollar for his life. Lou is a Faustian force, ready to take virtue for material gain from anyone willing to trust him.

In the end, the proposition of this character winning is so hateful, that I can rationalize the choice and admire the work, but I can't get fully behind a movie so pitch-black. There's those various psychological studies that say some percentage of the world's business leaders/politicians are psychopaths/sociopaths, and if accurate, it's just not something I like to think about. Nightcrawler confronts the viewer with the probable fact that those most ruthless are probably doing pretty well for themselves. It remains a B, because I think it's well-considered and fantastically acted, but the execution of its premise is gross.

Drew

9/9/2015 02:39:51 pm

If Scorsese was against Bickle, then why have him win the end? Bickle should be in jail on death row but his "revenge" kills were glorified in Scorsese's world that he is able to survive freely.

Sure, he does not get the girl but that means little to Scorsese's portrayal of Bickle. He wanted Bickle to succeed and he did. I disagree with Jon's example of Scorsese's Bickle representation.

9/10/2015 12:27:14 am

Scorsese had sympathy for Bickle in the beginning as a broken man desperate for connection but completely clueless how to get it, and he tracks how that isolation turned him into a would-be assassin and a successful mass murderer. It’s only by accident that he’s not in jail or on death row, as his first target is thwarted by happenstance. That he doesn’t go to jail is on a society willing to look the other way on vigilantism. He hasn’t succeeded at all. His fame hasn’t moved him from where he was at the start of the movie, driving a cab. The ending of Taxi Driver clearly communicates that Bickle is going to rampage again, and his target may not be as media-friendly as an underage brothel.

In no way is Bickle’s violence glorified. The shoot-out scene is shot in ugly light, and Bickle only wins because he’s better armed. People he shoots require more bullets than expected, they scream and moan, and he makes a lot of mistakes that almost get him killed. The end of the scene is Bickle trying and failing to shoot himself. Scorsese is filming it as an ugly event, and my go-to interpretation is that the uglier violence is, the truer the scene becomes.

Contrast that with Nightcrawler, where Lou is never given the sympathetic build-up that Bickle is, and the movie never uses cinematic language to judge his actions. It’s a different take on a similar character, though I prefer Scorsese’s approach. He’s seeing the world as is and wanting it to be better, while Gilroy is seeing the world as is and showing how to succeed.

9/10/2015 11:14:50 am

Not at all. Bickle's behavior was validated by his freedom. You called it society's ability to "look the other way on vigilantism" but that was a copout. Scorsese clearly felt sorry for his own character and wanted him to win, which validated his atrocious and murderous behavior.

The scene in and of itself had little to do with its celebration. Its glorification was that he won and faced no consequences for it. What other validation was required? A woman in a yellow suit chopping off her nemesis' head in the snow?

Lou, on the other hand, was a sociopath so no sympathetic build - up was necessary. His actions were also validated because he won in every situation presented to him and rewarded for it. I do not dispute you on that front.

9/10/2015 11:32:31 am

Just because a character doesn't go to jail doesn't mean his actions are being validated. That goes back to the comeuppance complaint. Getting away with behaviors whether it be criminal or immoral doesn't make it justified or validated. The direction and the tone are much more important. Lou reminds me much more of Patrick Bateman of American Psycho than Travis Bickle. While Bateman turns things up to 11 I think the seeds are planted where Lou could eventually commit and stage crimes in order to expand on his growing Video News Productions empire. Bickle was much more emotionally driven. All three characters are shown for what they are to the viewers to decide for themselves. In all 3 instances most viewers see a deeply troubled character who should be in jail- the fact they don't end the movie in jail doesn't equal validation.

9/10/2015 11:56:22 am

Wholeheartedly but respectfully disagree.

Bickle was never punished for his actions and neither was Bloom for that matter. My focus is on Bickle. Bickle's actions were justified because it was out of vigilantism? Please. You know, my neighbors are mean to their dogs so if I punished them the way they should be, something to the effect of hitting them with a baseball bat several times and nothing was done in retaliation, what does that mean? Bickle killed people who needed to be killed but everyone appeared to be fine that he got away with it because his victims were scum. And that was exactly what Scorsese wanted. He wanted a victory for his sad and demented character and the violence was, wrongly, justified with his freedom.

9/10/2015 03:54:15 pm

Drew, are you saying all bad people must end up dead or in jail otherwise their actions are validated?

9/11/2015 03:33:18 am

If I didn't love Taxi Driver so much, I would leave this alone. Alas, here we are.

The difference between Lou Bloom and Travis Bickle is the difference between Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Lou and Harris are textbook sociopaths, compulsive liars who weigh peoples' lives in terms of how they can improve their own. Bickle and Klebold are suicidal depressives, so stuck in their neuroses and despair that they resent other people for not feeling like they do. The former don't warrant sympathy, as any attempt to earn it is just more manipulation. The latter deserve sympathy, as different influences and interventions might've pulled them out of their tailspin. They both deserve judgment for their actions, sympathy or no.

Taxi Driver understands this dichotomy in its bones. Travis is driven by his war experiences to insomnia and isolation, which makes him bad with people, which makes him incapable of remedying his isolation, which isolates him further, which makes him hate people. He's in bad shape as the film opens, but he's not a murderer. He becomes one at the end of the film, and no matter who his victims are, he deserves punishment.

Drew said Travis escapes punishment because Scorsese sympathized too heavily with his protagonist and couldn't punish him. I completely disagree with that. His escape from punishment reinforces that the society that sent him to war, that fucked up his brain and his back, deems some violence acceptable and some unacceptable. His brothel rampage: acceptable. His attempted assassination of a presidential candidate: unacceptable. This hypocrisy guarantees that society will experience further violence by a Travis that is now too far gone.

The idea of Travis 'winning' when he's in, at best, the exact same spot he was when the movie began is not winning by any means. If he was walking Iris to school at the end and flirting with her teacher after a full night's rest, then Drew would have a better argument. He's at status quo ante at the end, except now the clock on his trigger has been reset and will inevitably hit midnight again.

Lou Bloom doesn't undergo any internal transformation, which is why he differs from Travis, which is what I initially said in my supplement review.

9/11/2015 03:39:15 am

American Psycho's a good comparison. It's more satirical, but maybe that's what Nightcrawler was going for in the first place. It plays everything so straight that it's hard to see the satire.

9/9/2015 05:13:35 pm

I never saw a Jake Gyllenhaal film until this one and was glad to watch it. He pulled off the creepy sociopath look and vibe easily. By the end of the film, I was reminded of the Seinfeld episode where Jerry asked George to help him pass a polygraph test while lying. After George arrogantly claimed he could not, he gave Jerry a piece of advice. "It's never a lie, if you believe it."

That is a bit of foreshadowing for Nightcrawler's end so let that be saved for later. In the meantime, this was a good film. Dan Gilroy had something to say about local media outlets and its competition for breaking news. From Gilroy's perspective, the cutthroat rivalry among freelance videographers drove Louis Bloom to not just push the ethical envelope but jump over the line and spit on it. For what? Ratings.

We can talk about negotiating, and it was present, but the underlying theme was Gilroy's view of the news. When competition is the driving force of local news, information be damned. Keeping viewers informed is put out to pasture because flashy headlines with attractive anchors telling a story filled with half truths and holes became the order of the day. Why else do local affiliates put a good looking woman in front of a camera to tell a murder story? Don Henley's song "Dirty Laundry" hits the nail on the head for Nightcrawler.

Louis Bloom was creepy and a sociopath. He lied without remorse and acted on instinct immediately. There was never any question about how low Bloom would go to get a story. He should be in jail for withholding evidence and obstructing justice but that did not happen. He believed what he did was right and convinced himself that he did not do the things of which the detective accused him. That is why he was able to lie with ease. To him, the lie was the truth.

Ricky was, simply put, dumb. Yeah, he needed a job but never used his head for his betterment. That simplicity bothered me.

The acting was great. Rene Russo, the first time in a long time, was great. Gyllenhaal was also exceptional. This was probably his best acting in a while. Would recommend to anyone. Good pick, Blair.

Grade: B+

9/10/2015 12:43:03 am

I don't know if you can call the news theme underlying when it was so clearly stated. Lou's essentially reading from an article about media criticism.

9/9/2015 08:34:27 pm

Nightcrawler was a movie that always looked like a pass but the more I heard about it the more I thought I should give it a try. When it hit Netflix I still couldn't pull the trigger. Even still I wasn't thrilled about watching, I turned it on as background filler Tuesday while I was packing and it was engaging enough that I turned it off so I could actually watch it later that night.

I had made it far enough in to wonder who was more despicable Lou or Nina. After finishing Lou is the clear winner but Nina put up a decent fight. If the contest for who is the worse person was a football game, Lou had the advantage of taking the opening kickoff and getting an early score before Nina got the ball. An early punt gave Lou a 2 score lead but Nina started scoring soon just couldn't get a stop and a game that was10-14 points spread from start to finish finally ends with a pick 6 for Lou and an easy 20 point win on the Sportscenter scroll.

Both Gyllenhaals are really good at playing weird as sister Maggie's best performance is probably as the submissive in Secretary. It's probably the extra A when it should be an extra L that does it.
Rene Russo was solid. There's a degree of difficulty and a bit of a stigma in Hollywood transitioning from sexy female to old sexy female. Once you become old sexy female you can't be sexy female anymore so I'm guessing that bridge had to do with her not being around much lately.
Lou's dialogue was my favorite part of the movie. Whether it was him selling his skills to potential employers, interviewing potential candidates, or negotiating with Nina he never breaks from his script. The 2 moments that stood out the most were when he complimented Nina for her treatment of Frank and when he broke down his demands in his final negotiating with Nina.

Kevin Rahm and Bill Paxton were both underutilized as Joe and Frank. Anybody could've been scraggly and said brah a lot, Paxton was just there so the viewer could say hey that's Bill Pullman or Paxton I can never remember which. And Rahm was good in the screentime he got but I wanted more from him as a voice of reason and journalistic integrity. Ultimately, Nina's takedown of him and what airs was going to come but he needed to provide more of a fight than just shocked facial expressions before rolling over. I blame writing/directing/editing for this misstep. Riz Ahmed is also strong as Rick. He is vulnerable, uneducated, and scared off his ass. The perfect sidekick for Lou to take advantage of.

Great leads, solid support engaging story I'm going A-. It just didn't feel like a solid A so I have to throw the minus up there.

Lane

9/11/2015 01:22:12 am

“I’m lost.”

It’s the very first thing Lou Bloom says right before he beats up a rent-a-cop, takes his watch, and descends into a really long and dark Los Angeles night. And we’re pretty much obliged to come with him.

The scores for this film are decent so far and I’m going to push it a little farther and say that I think there’s something really great brewing under the hood of this film. Gilroy is obviously a pretty brilliant guy and doing a lot here. I love people that make allusions to big artistic works (“Ulysses” in this case) and then do something really interesting with it. I wish this was the 10th film he directed and not the first. I feel like there were some moments where I wish he had dialed back the emotional insanity and been a little more nuanced, but these were few and far between.

The scenes I loved most, however, were the ones that should have been super intense and over the top and, yet, were nuanced and quiet. The intensity came from the silence. The height of this was the final car chase scene (which was awesome, by the way) when the SUV and the cop car flips, Lou and Rick spin their car to a halt and then….silence. The action picks back up in a moment, but for just a minute there was nothing but a few flipped cars, some dudes filming, and a silent street.

And not to get too personal or sentimental on the Mediocre movie blog comments, but for anybody that has ever experienced a trauma, or sat in a hospital room as someone dies, this feels absolutely right. When people die in the movies, there are loud guitars and noise and flashing lights. When it happens in real life, there is no noise. No lights. There are no heroes. There are no anti-heroes. There’s only the lack of sirens. There’s just quiet. “Nightcrawler” nails the intensity of that silence. In those instances, people tend to just be lost. Sometimes people die. Sometimes people are good and people are bad.

There aren’t any bad acting performances here, but there are three really good performances – Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou, Riz Ahmed as Rick, and the City of Los Angeles at night. I love when context plays as big a role as story, and Gilroy pulls it off wonderfully here. I’ve only spent about a week in LA, but this depiction feels pretty much exactly like what I felt driving through Marina del Rey or Venice at 2 a.m. Creepy…expansive…dangerous…alluring…whatever.

There’s so much more I could go into here, much of which is covered in other comments. Many layers. Great movie pick.

Liked:
- Jake Gyllenhaal’s sociopathic eyes
- Non-sentimental Los Angeles depictions
- The Mexican restaurant seduction scene

Disliked:
- not much to dislike; agree more could have been done with the soundtrack

Ambivalent About:
- Being reminded by a co-watcher that Bill Paxton was in “Titanic.” Ugh.

Grade: A-

9/11/2015 03:44:35 am

I think Gilroy's got first-movie syndrome here, where he feels the need to put too fine a point on things. I agree that more experience would shave a lot of rough edges.

9/11/2015 11:28:11 am

The only scene where I groaned in a "wish he hadn't done that" way was the scene when Lou takes the car chase/shootout footage to Renee Russo and they have some sort of weird romantic moment in front of the TV monitor, as if they were two teenagers about to make-out in the back of a movie theater. To me, that just broke the interesting, demented transactional relationship that these two had and tried to make it sentimental, when sentiment plays pretty much no other part in the movie.

9/11/2015 09:54:41 am

Intensity of silence- poetic. Great review.

9/14/2015 01:12:30 pm

I had meant to get around to seeing Nightcrawler much sooner than this having heard that Jake Gyllenhaal was fantastic in it and it just looked like a unique experience. As Kissel eluded to, unique is a great way to describe this movie. It’s a fascinating look at a world I know little to nothing about, ultimately casting blame on the system in a bit of a heavy-handed manner.

The best part of this movie is Gyllenhaal’s performance as Lou Bloom, who has already been correctly identified as a sociopath of cartoonish levels. Gyllenhaal changed almost everything about himself for this role – he talks strange, he walks strange, he looks strange, he is strange in every way, and Gyllenhaal brings out those quirks. Part of me appreciated Lou’s ability to just lay everything out there when it benefitted him while holding back when it would be detrimental; again, textbook sociopath. Throughout the movie, it feels like we’re only in dark gray territory with Lou. He’s doing a few dishonest things here and there and quite a bit of sleazy “comes with the territory” work. By the end, Lou proves to be one of the vilest characters I’ve ever seen on the screen, and that change occurs gradually and in a way that makes sense.

Lou’s view of the world is very different from most leads (like Kissel, I can’t call him a protagonist or an anti-hero, so I’ll just go with “lead”) even if he isn’t much different internally. Throughout watching, I couldn’t help comparing Lou to Ivan Locke, who we also got to meet this round. Internally, they aren’t very different – both have an ISTJ personality and both seem incredibly ambitious. However, do two people feel more opposite? I think so, and it’s because of how they observe others in the world. While Ivan has his own moral code and tries to be considerate of all, Lou has no such “problems” holding him back, seeing people as tools for his own personal gain.

Lou does provide us with some classic interactions, and several scenes worked out as amazing short plays in a way. Lane mentioned the restaurant scene with Nina, which was a scene I found so compelling, I watched it twice. That’s something I never do. Seeing the emotions and balance of power shift in that one scene was just fantastic, and it really showed off how good of a combo Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo are. Speaking of Nina, Nina as a character is more despicable than Lou if you ask me. I can at least respect Lou’s open honesty in what this world is and what everyone is profiting from. Nina is as bad as Lou in every way but is just unwilling to get her hands dirty. In what is probably the best shot of the movie, where we see Nina and Lou staring at each other with Rick’s final moment frozen on the screen between them, we see who Nina really is – a fellow sociopath who begrudgingly respects the lengths Lou is willing to go to in order to both find or manufacture a compelling piece of news.

Second to the restaurant scene was the negotiation between Rick and Lou regarding Rick’s new salary. Hearing Lou confirm that Rick could have easily bargained for more was a welcome humorous interaction in an otherwise dark affair. Of course, it also foreshadows Rick’s demise for bargaining too much, but let’s not let that ruin the moment. Rick is almost a throwaway character until near the end, when he becomes Lou’s quasi-conscience as Lou films Joe’s accident. Ultimately, Rick tries to stand up to Lou and show that ambition Lou keeps talking about, but Lou ultimately never wanted that it seems, willing to “sacrifice” Rick for a better story. (Sacrifice goes in quotes as sacrifice is supposed to contain some sort of self-suffering, which Lou had none of.)

9/14/2015 01:12:55 pm

In the end, we’re left with a handful of terrible people and a couple idealists that get shot down and thrown aside at every turn. I think it’s easy to call Lou the antagonist here, but Gilroy has really painted the antagonist as the system of sensational news reporting these people are “trapped” in. This felt pretty heavy-handed to me as we had Nina’s assistant/co-worker Frank constantly questioning the morality of the situation. Was he supposed to act as the audience’s voice here? I thought his character was ultimately more harm than good, trying to manufacture a moral dilemma that Nina & Lou would never comprehend. Personally, I hate the idea of blaming the “system” for the behavior of people, which is a little how it felt with regards to Nina until the end. I’m glad that we ultimately have no sympathy for anyone left in Lou’s wake, as it would have been a copout. It’s an interesting message that I wish would have been delivered a little more subtlety.

Ultimately, Nightcrawler is an extremely well-done movie. It’s dark… probably too dark for its own good. But it is a little thought prevoking and a different take on a lead character in a world very few of us know much about.

+ Great performances from Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo
+ Lou is a well-written, very memorable character
+ Interesting look at a world we don’t know much about
+ Doesn’t pity the characters for a screwed-up system
- Message is delivered a little heavy-handed

Grade: A

Shane

9/16/2015 03:41:13 pm

I'm late to the party, so I'll stay brief:

Gylenhall was excellent. So was Russo. Rick looks like an "ethnic" version of Christopher Keller .

The law procedural stuff was not great. The police did not act like regular police with him. He 100% should have multiple criminal and civil charges against him. The movie loses serious points here for the sloppy handling of legal issues because this movie is in part criticizing the law. If they weren't criticizing the law in part, I wouldn't have cared as much. But come on. You can't just knock something without knowing what you're talking about.

I felt like the media criticism was a bit heavy-handed. The scene where they're eye-fucking each other with Rick dying in the background was a bit much for me. I like the social criticism that news is basically porn, but it was just overdone.

B

Nightcrawler

B+
3.41

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Nightcrawler

B+3.41

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B+
3.41