Sociable Movie Guy
REVIEWS
A Dark Story of One’s (Dark) ObsessionNowadays, finding a job is never an easy task. We’re faced with thousands of applicants as our competitors who fight for the limited (and often the same) job vacancies. More or less that’s what the main character in Dan Gilroy’s directorial debut ‘Nightcrawler’ feels. Jake Gyllenhaal plays the aforementioned character, Lou Bloom, who is searching for a job despite claiming to not have any formal education under his belt. He eventually delves into the world of L.A crime journalism. But the more he swims deep into his job, the more he gets darker pursuing what is considered good in his profession, for the sake of his personal gain. As the director and writer, Dan Gilroy executed the film well. He successfully makes the film works at two different level. Not only the film blatantly shows the ugly truth of what would (some) of the media do to reach higher rating, it is also a showcase for Jake Gyllenhaal’s acting chops. Lou Bloom is a hard role to play due to his layered characteristic. He is charming, smart, talkative, cold, lonesome, and creepy (not a good combination I can tell!). But Gyllenhaal skillfully portrays those layered characteristics, switching back and forth from the smooth-talker Lou Bloom to an ice-cold sociopath. There’s one particular scene involving Gyllenhaal’s Lou Bloom and Rene Russo’s Nina that shows how creepy and weird he is in building social relationship. Speaking of Rene Russo, her performance here has been hailed by many critics as the performance of her career. Some even linked her performance to the possibility of being an award contender. That may or may not be true, since I myself have only seen one Russo’s other film so far and it was really a long time ago (the remake of ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’, in which I always get distracted by her steamy scene with Pierce Brosnan). She is good in ‘Nightcrawler’, but not great. The cinematography by Robert Elswit is also worth the attention. It suits the tone of the film really well. The constant shadowy lightning really adds up to the grim mood of the film. Despite of that, I still feel that the film is lacking of thrilling aspects. Being marketed as a thriller, I expected the film would be more, well, thrilling. Frankly speaking, I thought in my mind while I was watching the film that this would be a 3/5. But then the scene near the end of the film popped up which made me raised the score to 3.5. The reason is simple, that scene powerfully glues Lou Bloom’s status as the real jerk.
Final score: 3.5/5
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AuthorA self-acclaimed movie guy who likes to socialize |