Country: USA
Movie Review: Highly entertaining, “Nightcrawler” marks an auspicious debut on direction from screenwriter Dan Gilroy (“The Fall”, “The Bourne Legacy”). Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Lou Bloom, a thief and obsessive psychopath who whimsically decides to gain his life in the nights of modern L.A., covering shocking occurrences after purchase a police scanner and a small video camera. From accidents to crimes, everything is a pretext for Lou to build up his ego, no matter at what cost. With a morbid determination, he builds his own career in the freelance crime journalism with the help of an admirer, Nina (Rene Russo), an experienced program director of a sensationalist TV news channel. Exhibiting a mighty confidence, he hires an assistant and even gets a faster car and a top-notch camera. His desired moment of fame arrives when he covers a triple homicide in Granada Hills, considered a safe neighborhood, hiding however the identities of the two murderers who went on the run. “Nightcrawler” has an uneasy pulsation that grabs our senses from the beginning, attaining the peak in its twisting last part. Not for one moment I doubted of Gyllenhaal, who plays the role flawlessly, showing how versatile he can be. Curiously we know that the disturbed Lou is capable of everything but we can’t help to be shocked with his coldness and abnormal premeditated acts. He’s not only a hunter of disgrace, he praises and participates in that same disgrace, the disgrace of others, for his own vanity. If you fancy crime thrillers don’t let this intimidating portrait of a sociopathic cameraman slip through your fingers.
