[Hot off the press. Busts don't come much fresher than this.]
Nightcrawler (2014) is an American crime thriller film written and directed by Dan Gilroy, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed, and Bill Paxton.
In the end, extreme loner and opportunistic criminal, Jake Gyllenhaal, carves out a successful new career for himself, gathering footage for glamorous yet raddled local television news executive, Rene Russo, by engineering the death of his assistant, Riz Ahmed, and sabotaging his main business competitor, Bill Paxton.
Unperturbed by being correctly identified as a thief by a scrap metal dealer who declines to hire him, quick witted, motor-mouth Gyllenhaal is intrigued when he witnesses a freelance videographer, Paxton, recording the grizzly aftermath of a freeway accident for television news.
Unable to persuade Paxton to give him a job, Gyllenhaal, using the proceeds from a stolen racing cycle, sets himself up with a cheap camcorder and police scanner, which allow him, through a naive willingness to get uncomfortably close to the injured and dying, on his first night, despite a very hostile reception from both emergency services and other news stringers, to capture graphic scenes that news editor, Russo is more than happy to buy.
Soaking up every detail he hears from those he encounters, self-educated Gyllenhaal applies himself to the task of learning what sells in the news business and how best to get it, in the process, taking on the shambolic and desperately unemployed Ahmed, as a barely paid assistant, chiefly on account of his phone's GPS capability.
Unfortunately, under the pressure of Gyllenhaal's maniacal driving, Ahmed proves to be a less than effective navigator, causing them to arrive late to the scene of one particularly promising house shooting incident.
Unwilling to accept that he has missed his chance, Gyllenhaal ignores police lines to obtains shots, without permission, from within the victim's home that, despite her colleagues' reservations, impress Russo considerably.
Buoyed by Russo's encouragement, Gyllenhaal manages to secure an increasing number of sales to her station, permitting him to upgrade both his equipment and his ride.
Complete with top-of-the-range scanners and navigation aids, the high performance car eventually enables Gyllenhaal and Ahmed to reach the site of a fatal country road smash, well before emergency services, giving Gyllenhaal, out of Ahmed's view, the chance to improve the staging of the scene for the benefit of the camera.
Emboldened by what he sees as his increasing importance to Russo's station's output, Gyllenhaal asks her out for dinner, to which she only agrees after Gyllenhaal makes veiled threats to take his footage elsewhere, and which proves to be an embarrassingly awkward miscalculation on Russo's part, as, with little regard for her feelings, Gyllenhaal employs hard-nosed business arguments to blackmail his way into her bed.
Indeed, so confident is he of his own potential, that when Paxton approaches him with an offer to team up, Gyllenhaal refuses in very insulting terms to even consider working in partnership, something Gyllenhaal seems incapable of doing, with him.
It's not long before Gyllenhaal has to pay the price of the animosity he generates, when Paxton gloats over beating him to the scene of a light aircraft crash, denying the incandescent Russo a story she felt her continuing sexual favours towards Gyllenhaal should have guaranteed her.
In private, the humiliation and disappointment Gyllenhaal feels over his failure, cause a complete loss of his usual unnaturally calm composure, prompting him to tamper with Paxton's news truck, resulting in a horrendous accident that sends Paxton to intensive care.
Their chief rival out of action, Gyllenhaal and Ahmed immediately follow up reports of a home invasion in an affluent neighbourhood.
With Ahmed keeping a lookout, Gyllenhaal witnesses the final moments of what turns out to be a brutal drug related family slaying, the explosive footage from which he uses to bargain his way further into Russo's station's organisation.
Unable to resist the opportunity to advance his soaring ambitions, Gyllenhaal deliberately withholds footage from both Russo and authorities that allows him to identify and track those responsible, waiting for the perfect moment to inform the police, so maximizing the impact of the ensuing arrest story they capture for Russo.
But in confiding his intentions beforehand, Gyllenhaal unwittingly put Ahmed in a position to demand better employment terms and an equal share of any eventual bounty, which, though Gyllenhaal reluctantly accepted, prompts him to deliberately betray Ahmed, who is shot dead by one of the killers at the end of the terrifying police chase they film.
Though convinced that Gyllenhaal is responsible for instigating the whole incident, investigators lack evidence of wrong doing, and are forced to release him, after questioning, allowing Gyllenhaal to expand his operation, which was precisely what Paxton had been hoping to achieve for himself with his original offer of partnership.
In portraying this weird Travis Bickle-Raymond Babbitt hybrid, Gyllenhaal joins a long list of distinguished Hollywood leads to have embraced either psychiatric disability or the dark-side of sociopathology, in order to widen their acting credentials, though not usually in the same role.
Certainly Dan Gilroy's combination of Forrest Gump'ish naivety, and Rupert Pupkin'esque ambition makes for arresting viewing, were chocolate box philosophy and chat show insincerity are replaced by motivational sound bites and beguiling corporate business-speak.
So it is perhaps unfortunate that Gyllenhaal's character is so undeniably a monster as to eclipse the monsters of television news he serves.
Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightcrawler_(film)
