Cinemazlowski "Nightcrawler" – a wake up call for news networks?

Oct 31, 2014

We can’t say that we haven’t been warned. It’s been nearly 40 years since “Network” burned up movie screens on its way to winning Best Picture, over 32 years since Don Henley unleashed his dark-as-coal masterpiece“Dirty Laundry” onto the world’s radio stations, and 12 years since Michael Moore showed us all how dangerous local TV news was becoming to our psyches in“Bowling for Columbine.”

Now comes the new movie “Nightcrawler,” an almost indescribably great movie that mixes sinister satire, harrowing suspense, crackerjack car chases, and utterly unique performances to create a modern classic that exists purely on its own terms. Barreling into theaters this weekend amid an inspired run of films that have been uncommonly good in the last few weeks, it is an absolute must-see on an artistic level, though it has some problematic elements faithful viewers should be aware of.

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a desperate Los Angeles fringe dweller named Lou Bloom who stumbles into becoming the hottest freelance cameraman (aka“nightcrawler”) in tabloid-style local news, “Nightcrawler” pokes fun at the ridiculous lows that our newscasters and their handlers have sunk to and serves as a telephoto lens pinpointing the madness that we all embrace too easilyevery time we watch a live car chase down the freeway.

The movie opens with Bloom being caught by a guard for cutting a chain-link fence and stealing it in order to sell the metal. He gets the upper hand on the guard and steals his watch, before heading to a shady scrap yard and trying not only to fast-talk his way into better payments but also into a job with the boss. The answer: “I’m not gonna hire a thief.”

And thus we see all we need to know about Lou, and all we’re really going to get about this mysterious sociopath who knows how to talk a mile a minute and flash a toothy smile, but is disconcertingly creepy beneath the surface like a modern-day Eddie Haskell from “Leave It to Beaver.” After seeing that other nightcrawlers are making $300 and up for literal minutes of footage from bloody car wrecks, he steals a fancy bike on Venice Beach and trades it in for a video camera and a police radar scanner before chasing car crashes and shootings across Los Angeles.

At first, he’s competing against a veteran nightcrawler (Bill Paxton) who runs his own service called Mayhem News, but Lou quickly learns the ropes and talks a clueless and overly enthusiastic younger man into being his assistant for $30 a night, even as he starts making thousands of dollars for his footage. The person paying him is a desperate and aging news producer named Nina (Rene Russo) at KWLA-Channel 6, which is so blatantly a spoof of Los Angeles station KTLA-Channel 5’s embarrassingly airheaded local coverage that Channel 6’s headquarters is even the same building as the real-life KTLA.

Soon, Lou has Nina so desperate for his stunningly graphic footage that he manages to negotiate far beyond outrageous fees, and manages to practically take over the station and her very being. But when he not only crosses the line at a triple murder scene but storms through it like he’s driving a Sherman tank, no one involved in this roller coaster ride is ever going to be the same again.

There can’t be enough praise lavished upon Gyllenhaal here, for he has spent the past decade building a career in which no two movies or roles are remotely alike. From “Donnie Darko” and “Zodiac” through “Prisoners,” with many more innovative flicks in between (I’m not singling out “Brokeback Mountain”, of course), he has become the most challenging actor of his generation: utterly unafraid to take chances and even be unlikable, in the service of work that not only entertains viewers but makes them think and even ask big questions.

Writer-director Dan Gilroy cast his real-life wife Rene Russo as the ruthless TV news producer Nina, but she delivers a performance that also hits all types of angles with precision. Watching her coach news anchors to say reprehensible things as they lurch their way through harrowing crime and accident footage, Russo is a stone-cold perfect match for Lou and even finds his unflinching focus a turn-on.

“Nightcrawler” has some frequent profanity, primarily about 50 F-words and about 10 or so uses of God’s name in the form of G-D and Jesus’ name.It also has some graphic shots of car crash and shooting victims, and while there is a shootout and an amazing car chase, it’s not exploiting its violence, and there’s no onscreen sex or nudity. However, Lou is an amoral sociopath who is constantly scamming and blackmailing his way to success. Overall, it’s fairly in the middle for an R-rated movie in terms of immoral content.

Watching this movie, one gets the feeling that far too much of it is far too close to being true. Watch the hysteria-inducing constant state of “Breaking News” alerts on Fox News, or the shamelessly shallow approach of the newest anchor on ABC’s “World News Tonight”, and you’ll be even more certain that in general, journalism is dead, its zombified last kicks powered by any means necessary.

Here’s hoping that “Nightcrawler” can kick some life and guts back into the reporters who still know how to shake the system with their work. But sad to say, we can’t count on anything truly changing. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a fascinating ride.