Jake Gyllenhaal is the nightcrawler. A nightcrawler is a worm. Bloom, the character played here, is a sociopath. His ambitions and fixations far outweigh common morality. Let's face it, his cohorts in the business aren't much better than he is, but they have a kind of code, and they don't participate in enhancing the crime. When Bloom moves an accident victim for the first time in order to get a better shot, he crosses the line and stays on the other side. He is willing to do anything to get his way and he is a master at monotonous monologue when he is confronted. It's as if he is reading from a book. I heard an interview recently with Gyllenhaal and he recited some of this stuff from memory with almost no emotion. This is a terrific performance by one of our really good actors. The way he is able to slide into every situation unscathed and maintain that sardonic grin is really nonpareil. This is about the voyeurism of the audience which demands this hateful kind of portrayal.

"Nightcrawler" is an incredibly graphic and adult film...so think twice before you watch it. The language, the violence and content is NOT something everybody will want to see...to think twice (I am saying it again just to emphasize this strongly).

When the film begins, Louis (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a cheap little crook stealing and doing what he can to get by. In the process of doing this, he happens upon a film crew covering a crime scene...and Louis has found his purpose. He soon gets himself a cheap camcorder and police scanner and soon begins spending his evenings driving about LA--looking for mayhem in order to make a buck off it. As the film progresses, Louis' complete lack of ethics and conscience is shocking...especially when he begins manipulating things to make news stories and withholding police evidence in order to get the BIG story!

This film is incredibly cynical in the way it shows the news. It shows the newsfolk as mostly a lot of soulless bottom-feeders--and Louis is the king of them all. And, as his videos become more and more horrific, Louis seems to be enjoying it with an almost orgiastic pleasure. I really appreciated in the film is Jake Gyllenhaal's performance. His wide-eyed almost insane look really helped his character...as did his weird, gaunt look. And, it helped that the more awful the things were that he was covering, the happier he appeared. Some excellent acting by him. Overall, a cynical, intense and difficult film that is not for everyone...and it's a logical 21st century extension of the sort of exploitative news that thrilled audiences with "Network".

NIGHTCRAWLER is an engaging, ever-so-dark character study/thriller which explores the subject of voyeurism - particularly the very human, rubber-necking trait of becoming obsessed by murders, crime, accidents and bloodshed. This atypical, fresh-feeling film plays out in an inventive way, inviting the viewer to go on a heart-of-darkness style journey alongside a gaunt and frightening Jake Gyllenhaal, doing his obsessed thing again after ZODIAC and even less human this time around. What transpires is ghoulishly entertaining, featuring strong supporting turns from Rene Russo and Riz Ahmed as others along for the ride, building to a quietly devastating climax. I could have done with the character work a little more grey rather than so explicitly black and white, especially at the slightly contrived climax, but otherwise this is well made stuff.