ARTS & CULTURE
unscrupulous reporter played by Kirk Douglas in Billy
Wilder’s scabrous Ace in the Hole. Gyllenhaal, underrecognized for his convincing turns in Donnie Darko,
Brokeback Mountain, and Zodiac, completes a career
rejuvenation in Nightcrawler.
Bug-eyed and manically vulnerable, unhinged but
precisely pitched, Lou is a magpie; a demented bottom-feeder, a neon-lit survivalist mauling his way
across LA, the flip side of Ryan Gosling in Drive, playing the angles and filling space with empty words
instead of soulful silences. Coiled and ready to spring,
he’s as transfixing as a cobra in a snake charmer’s
outfit, just as much a bloodsucker as Dracula. Suave,
reptilian, and terrifying, he’s the MacGyver of masturbatory shut-in Googlers, raised in a cramped
crawlspace on Robert Kiyosaki books. It’s adolescent
solipsism gone grotesquely rancid.
With his emaciated frame and robotic enthusiasm,
Lou is one of the most disturbing movie characters of
the year, like a Wes Anderson character whose ambition has warped into a realm of violent sociopathy.
The courageous and counterintuitive pairing of its
leads – Russo is 60, Gyllenhaal is 33 – produces undeniable erotic chemistry. Nightcrawler has a sulphuric
quality and sick sense of humour that mirrors the
muted aquarium that Los Angeles becomes after the
sun goes down.
In his directorial debut, screenwriter Dan Gilroy
executes his ideas with coolness, and Nightcrawler
also has a caffeinated spirit worthy of its graveyard
shift milieu, a darkness artfully breached by PTAregular Robert Elswit (Boogie Nights, Magnolia,
There Will Be Blood), perhaps the best cinematographer in the business. However, like his erratic protagonist, Gilroy doesn’t always know when to settle
down – it’s a bit too outlandish and loathsome, and
the spell’s broken as soon as plot overtakes mood.
Half of the script sounds like it was gleaned from
a self-help book; the other half sounds like the ramblings of a delusional narcissist in need of professional
help. Some of the cleverest phrases are actually tired
clichés (the decades-old adage “If it bleeds, it leads”),
while others are browbeaten repetitively to the point
of aggravation (“My motto is, ‘If you want to win the
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lottery, you have to make the money to buy a ticket’”).
Eager to shock but reluctant to reveal,
Nightcrawler’s scolding tone runs counter to its pulp
energy, as if Gilroy is instructing the audience to be
alarmed by the things that turn them on. The film
offers a familiar vision of today’s producers as misery
peddlers, and callow ratings slaves bordering on the
monstrous. Some clunky exposition and on-the-nose
thematic monologues result in a rocky start, and
it’s not wholly in control of its pay-off, Lou’s graceless and unnecessary face-off at a police station. No
matter how much it strains to be Network meets The
Silence of the Lambs, it’s never as effective as any of
its many brilliant predecessors.
But Gyllenhaal’s wickedness prevails. Sleaze
coats every frame of Nightcrawler, and some of it
is deliriously thrilling. As much as it intends to be
a takedown of the media’s pandering, “think-ofour-network-as-a-screaming-woman-runningdown-the-street-with-her-throat-cut” ethos, the
nauseating, vehicular lunacy is the versatile secret
weapon. Full of evil that descends like a toxic cloud
upon a tainted city, Nightcrawler is a tribute to the
vile, a morbidly macabre carnival. It’s a skeezy, delectable little noir well worth a prowl.
For more reviews, visit Absurdity & Serenity at
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Celebrating the 25th anniversary of the fall of
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