It's been on my movie wishlist for quite some time now, since the time I saw the frankly creepy physical transformation Jake Gyllenhaal underwent for the role and realized only slightly disappointedly that it probably wasn't going to be about everybody's favourite fuzzy blue Catholic guy. Once I'd got over the fact that this was not the Nightcrawler movie I was looking for, however, I came to the conclusion it actually looked pretty good in its own right - I quite like a bit of modern-day noir, and this certainly looked like it fit the bill.
The titular character is one Lou Bloom, who I like to think of as the Bloom The Brothers Bloom kept locked in the attic for a couple of decades for not being whimsical enough, until he turned into a bat, exploded out of the skylight and flapped his way from Europe (Nonspecified) to downtown LA. When we first meet him, he's stealing metal to sell to local scrapyards, which apparently isn't a longstanding and respected professional trade there in the same way it is on the streets where I live.
Bloom is smart, he's lean (very lean) and hungry (possibly because of the leanness?). He asks the scrap metal dealer for a job using the sort of language more commonly heard in self-help books and motivational seminars, but swiftly finds himself rebuffed. As he leaves, however, he finds himself at the scene of a vehicle accident, and gets the chance to watch the nightcrawlers - those who film gory footage of crimes and accidents, then sell them to the highest-bidding local TV station for use on the news. Immediately, he knows he's found his vocation.
The film charts Bloom's progress, aided and abetted by producer Nina Romina (Rene Russo), a faded former reporter on a downward career trajectory. She recognizes his latent talent and nurtures it, and the two form a cautious professional alliance that initially threatens to veer over into friendship. As Bloom recognizes that his star is rising, however, it becomes increasingly obvious that he will do whatever is required to gain the wealth and recognition he believes is his due, and personal relationships are twisted and abandoned as he clambers determinedly towards the top of the local news heap.
The good
There are times when sleaze isn't a good thing in a movie. Your average Vince Vaughn or Adam Sandler offering, for instance, or any of Woody Allen's self-insert movies for the past couple of decades or so. Nightcrawler, on the other hand, is the sleaziest thing I've seen in years, so seedy and disturbing and depressing that it eased me gently and greasily past the self-disgust to the point where I felt slightly stunned by the brutal beauty of it all. The cinematography is amazing from the very start of the opening credits, which run over a backdrop of slow, langorous nighttime shots of the less glamorous parts of Los Angeles. Even at this stage, it is absolutely clear that the viewer is being inducted into a world inhabited exclusively by the amoral and the desperate, surviving on their wits and the well-gnawed corpses of those who already fell by the wayside.Gyllenhaal, of course, is superb, his speech patterns making him feel like the flipside of the cheery narrator from True Stories, but so is Russo, poised and confident even as the cracks start to appear in what the viewer initially believes is her perfect life. Radiantly lit by the dim lights of the studio monitors or the candles at a cheap restaurant, she offers only the briefest, saddest glimpses of the sense of loss that can await an attractive but only moderately talented woman when her looks begin to fade.
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