The notions of Good and Evil are profoundly misunderstood by most people and cinema is partially to blame. Nobody ever thinks they're the bad guy. Everybody's the protagonist of their own story, and whoever stands against their needs is the incarnation of Satan himelf. Needless to say, I fucking hate cardboard morality. You know who agrees with me? Dan Gilroy, writer and director of NIGHTCRAWLER, a movie that's kind of a UFO in the Hollywood landscape, not unlike Nicolas Winding Refn's DRIVE had been a couple years ago. It's a stylish, yet subtle and understated film that gracefully walks the fine line of morality in fiction. In other words, NIGHTCRAWLER is fucking awesome. It's by far the best movie I've seen this year.
Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a social outcast torn between his ambitions and his urgent need to feed himself. He drifts in the Los Angeles night, doing whatever he can to get by. One night, he drives by the site of a car accident, where nighcrawling journalists are shooting footage of cops rescuing a woman from her burning car. That moment changes Lou's life. He (seemingly) steals a bicycle and pawns it off for a handheld camera and a police scanner and takes a swan dive into the world of nightcrawling. Lou's dedicated, fearless and a little bit of a psychopath, so he's terrific at what he does. He's able to best the competition with inferior manpower and equipment. But when you're raising the bar on yourself and everybody else in your domain, you gotta do crazy shit to keep your edge.
NIGHTCRAWLER is a movie about survival, a theme that's very dear to me. Not the Bear Grylls, naked-in-Yosemite-Park kind, but the day-to-day survival when fucking life itself stacked the deck against you. Lou Bloom's not a particularly likeable protagonist, but he's not inherently evil and it's difficult to root against him. Whoever opposes him in NIGHTCRAWLER is trying to step on his head to further their own interest. Instead of going through his ''inmost cave'' like the conventional Hollywood hero, Lou embraces the competition and goes evolutionnary on every other nightcrawler in the business. Dan Gilroy wrote a gem of a script that surfs the BREAKING BAD wave of moral uncertainty. NIGHTCRAWLER is practically free of cardboard feelings and hollow plot devices.
Jake Gyllenhall is usually good, but in NIGHTCRAWLER he's fucking fantastic.
A telltale sign that a movie will most likely be good is that it's been written and directed by the same person. NIGHTCRAWLER is solely the product of Dan Gilroy's mind and it is one cohesive, thoughtful and subtly shaded bad boy. Every scene has been thoroughly crafted for maximum impact and Gilroy's cinematic language is accsible enough for everybody to appreciate. My favourite scene was the actual home invasion (not a spoiler, it's in the trailer *), Lou beats the police to the scene and walks on the property as the crime is being perpetraded and gunshots resonate off screen while the camera is locked on him. I jumped off my seat with every gunshot and felt how terrifying it must've been to be there and witness such a crime while not knowing exactly what happened. Not many filmmakers put such thought process in their scenes anymore.
I don't expect NIGHTCRAWLER to win many awards, although it should. That baby is bound to become a darling of cult audiences and to alienate the majority of the well-thinking, once again not unlike DRIVE did a couple years ago. It's clearly not a movie meant for everyone, but it sure as shit was meant for people like me, who enjoy movies that challenge conventions and stories that challenge the morals of the masses. As my buddy eloquently said (for French speakers only), NIGHTCRAWLER is like DRIVE and L.A CONFIDENTIAL had a love child together. Would it be possible that NIGHTCRAWLER unleashed the talent of a writer who can channel the best out of Vince Gilligan, James Sallis and James Ellroy together? One can only hope. You have my attention, Dan Gilroy. Keep being awesome, please.
BADASS
BADASS
* By the way, I think that trailer is full of spoilers AND contains the very last scene of the movie (who does that?). Whoever made the trailer did a very poor job, but I enjoyed the shit out of this movie anyway. It's too good to be ruined.