Every movie we see #118: Jake Gyllenhaal is an absolutely compelling Nightcrawler
*Not to be confused with one of the mutants in The X-Men.
No one was free to watch Nightcrawler with us, and we didn’t think it would run for a second week, so we watched it alone. Excellent decision.
Dan Gilroy’s film, shot by the great Robert Elswit, follows a freelance videographer who prowls Los Angeles in the dead of night, shooting footage of urban crime scenes, grisly accidents and high-casualty fires, which he sells to a TV news program. Jake Gyllenhaal, so thin his eyes are popping out of his face, is absolutely compelling as a man in whom the rhetoric of self-help and the motivational industry takes the place of a self. Basically he’s a slithering, bottom-feeding insect in human form. This is what happens when the will to succeed is unhampered by a moral compass.
With Rene Russo as the TV news producer who becomes his enabler, and Riz Ahmed as his hapless “intern”.
Watch it any way you can.
Update: Aha since the new Hunger Games doesn’t open till tomorrow, Nightcrawler has been held over an extra day. Go!
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