ViewGuide

Created Nov 04, 2014 10:49PM PST • Edited Dec 27, 2019 02:09AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   Nightcrawler is L.A.‘s Taxi Driver, with Jake Gyllenhaal’s morally vacuous street prowler supplanting Robert DeNiro’s demented urban loner. Dan Gilroy’s movie delivers a freakish amount of cinematic energy, exposing the nightmares of Los Angeles in particular, and our Eyewitness News society in general.

   It’s actually a crowd-pleaser. That may say as much about us as it does the movie, but my crowd ate it up.

   Gyllenhaal plays a denizen of the night named Louis Bloom, instantly one of his Known For performances.

   Dan Gilroy, who wrote and directed Nightcrawler, has been married to Rene Russo for almost 25 years. She plays the graveyard-shift news producer at the lowest-rated TV station in L.A. Terrific casting that! Her quasi-erotic interplay with Gyllenhaal’s nearly autistic video hustler is priceless.

   Nightcrawler name-drops as au courant, with Twitter mentioned, yet it plays more like Nineties’ News, before the Net Everywhere disrupted old media. Still, that’s a nit, little more than enough to knock Gilroy’s boffo movie off the Perfect beam. It lands squarely on Really Great, 4.5 on a scale of 5, an instant classic.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Jake Gyllenhaal produced as well as headlines Nightcrawler. Losing 20 pounds left him skinny and angular, perfect for playing an urban thief. Louis Bloom is Gyllenhaal’s second extreme L.A. guy in three years, including 2012’s End of Watch. He’s tremendous, knocking-on-De Niro’s door tremendous. Verbally adept, he has no trouble blithely spouting entrepreneurial bromides from behind vacuous eyes.

   Supporters

   • Rene Russo plays a producer at a low-rated TV station, a well-drawn and better-casted role for the longtime wife of moviemaker Dan Gilroy. Russo is a past mistress of strongly glamorous women, adept at taking on all manner of male comers. It’s a fine performance by a superfine woman.
   • Kevin Rahm essays professional defeatism better than most actors, here and in Mad Men.
   • Riz Ahmed makes a splash as an underwhelming street dude who becomes Bloom’s aide.
   • Bill Paxton is nails as a competitive nightcrawler with the evocative name of Joe Loder. Natch
   • Jonny Coyne is authentic as a Pawn Shop Owner.
   • Michael Hyatt is powerful as an LAPD Detective. Michael is a she, BTW

   Anchors

   • Kent Shocknek as Kent Shocknek
   • Pat Harvey as Pat Harvey
   • Sharon Tay as Sharon Tay
   • Rick Garcia as Rick Garcia
   • Leah Fredkin as Female Anchor
   • Bill Seward as Bill Seward
   • Rick Chambers & Holly Hannula as KWLA Anchors

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    Writer-director Dan Gilroy unspools a near perfect film of urban angst, L.A. style. Nightcrawler glimmers like the real L.A., but could be more like the nighttime L.A. skyline behind the anchorman’s desk – fake.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

12. Play Great 4.0

    Gilroy’s script gives Gyllenhaal’s Lou Bloom a steady patter of upbeat management nostrums that can be found under the hashtag #RepeatAfterLou.

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    How do you create perfect visuals for a story set on the streets of L.A.? 3 dozen stuntmen & 18 drivers

15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 2.8

    “If it bleeds, it leads” turned me off from local TV news a long time ago. Nightcrawler delivers tons of schadenfreude because it leads with video that bleeds TV news and is perversely entertaining as a result.

17. Sex Titillating 1.8

18. Violence Savage 3.7

19. Rudeness Profane 2.9

21. Reality

    Glib 1.3

    Dan Gilroy’s most subtle accomplishment is to appropriate the feel of a horror movie – Nightcrawler, about a creepy hollow-eyed man – while keeping the Bio and PhysioReality at an rFactor of 1.

22. Circumstantial Glib 2.0

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0