Halloween weekend has to be a bad time to open a movie. After all, the movie watching masses are all out partying. That’s too bad for Nightcrawler starring Jake Gyllenhaal as it deserves a wider audience. In a world of remakes and reboots, it brings something to the screen as rare as a unicorn – an original idea.
Gyllenhaal stars as Lou – an odd eccentric fellow just trying to scrape a living together. At the start of the film, he is uneducated and unemployed, but what he lacks in credentials he makes up with an uncanny ability to talk fast and spew out buzz words that employers love to hear during interviews. Example – “I’m a motivated self-starter.” In other words, he says alot of things that mean nothing but sound great.
Driving home after selling stolen construction supplies, he passes by a car accident in which police officers are heroically pulling out a female driver from a car engulfed in flames. In awe, Lou watches as cameramen arrive on scene to film the chaos. They’re independents who roam around Los Angeles filming carnage and sell their footage to the highest bidding news station.
Lou is hooked and sees this as his big opportunity to make something of himself. He visits a pawn shop, trades his bicycle for a camcorder and a police scanner, and a small business is born. He even takes on an intern. Initially, Lou tries to talk his intern into working for free but eventually caves during negotiations and agrees to pay him thirty dollars a night. As a noteable sign of the times, Lou is full of witty social commentary about the lousy economy – how employment is no longer guaranteed for the masses, how people need to be willing to work for free or next to nothing to get their foot in the door, and so on.
“The Nightcrawler’s” business grows and soon enough, he’s purchased a fabulous Dodge Challenger and honestly, at this point, this tricked-out sports car with its revved up Hemi becomes the star of the show. The name of the game is to listen to the police scanner and to drive as fast as possible to accidents and crime scenes to be the first to film and sell. Lou’s not the only independent cameraman in the business and he quickly developes a rivalry with Bill Paxton.
I don’t want to give away anymore spoilers – you can watch the film at eleven, so to speak. Overall, the film is dark and edgy as Lou isn’t a typical hero but rather a fast talking sociopath who does whatever it takes to succeed in the nightly news business – and often goes too far. Great acting and cast, including Rene Russo as the nightly news director who buys Lou’s footage, a ton of action and a pretty amazing car chase scene.
I reccomend it. Unfortunately, when a movie is little off the beaten path, it gets relegated to an opening on a weekend where everyone is out partying and wearing goofy costumes, but hopefully it will develop a following and gain more exposure.
Bookshelf Battle 