Nightcrawler Review

Coming out of Nightcrawler I was trying to think of a director that has had a better debut film than this. Dan Gilroy has created a modern masterpiece. The film follows Jake Gyllenhall’s Lou Bloom, a man with poor social skills but a phenomenal ego who takes to the world of late night TV journalism, “if it bleeds, it leads”. The social comment the film makes is incredibly poignant, but what’s impressive about the film is how exceptional it works as a thriller, the end sequence is masterful in its tension building leading to a violent outcome and a car chase-chase. At over 2 hours long it feels incredibly lean as well, there’s no sub plots that don’t lead anywhere, this film has an idea and then just ramps it up. The indisputable best aspect of this film however is its leading man, there is no performance that I can think of anything like Lou Bloom, he is a sociopath who spouts self-taught business jargon at people as he makes everyone’s skin crawl “if you want to win the lottery you have to make the money to buy the ticket” being one of his philosophies. His relationship with news producer Rene Russo is easily the most interesting relationship of the year. Gyllenhall’s career has rocketed in the last couple of years from good actor to great actor, he’s suddenly become a name that makes a film like this a must-see. (High 5 Stars)