Second Viewing: Nightcrawler (2014)

Nightcrawler is an excellent film, and a showcase for Jake Gyllenhaal’s remarkable talents. It’s sort of a black comedy, with its satire being about media sensationalism. It’s kind of stuff we’ve seen all before, but with Gyllenhaal’s incredible performance, it feels different.

Gyllenhaal basically plays a sociopath who at first has no real direction, but eventually discovers his passion in shooting and recording crime scenes as they happen for the news. And to top it all off, he’s a fantastic businessman.

This movie is basically all about how nothing will get in his character’s way. And the movie presents two other fantastic characters to sort of point out how weird it is. At first Rene Russo just seems like she loves all this stuff, since she’s running a news show or station, but even she gets turned off by his actions.

And he hires a loner, Rick (Riz Ahmed), who is turned off by his weird ways immediately, but sticks around for as long as he can because he needs the money.

This culminates in a really fantastic and exciting climax, and while the movie is a bit predictable, it remains fascinating while it happens.

Rating: 9/10