Dan Gilroy
Lo Sciacallo - Night Crawler

I decided to watch Nightcrawler on a Saturday night because, fundamentally, I didn't know what else to do. The alternative that day was finally watching that mega blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy, because I'm still convinced that I'm the only one in this hemisphere who hasn't seen it; after realizing that, as usual, I wasn't in the mood to watch a raccoon shooting a Gatling gun and Batista acting (I still want to remember him with the unforgettable Evolution, while pretending to beat people up with Triple H, Randy Orton, and the impeccable Ric Flair), I opted for Nightcrawler. I’d say I didn’t regret it.

The protagonist of the film is Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), a petty metal thief who, desperately seeking a job, improvises as a Nightcrawler in Los Angeles, patrolling the city at night, intercepting police radio, and filming accidents, murders, and other gruesome events to try to sell the footage to local TV stations. Well, better than spamming your CV on Zara's website, I think. So Louis steals a racing bike and exchanges it at a pawn shop for a video camera and a police scanner; more of a startup than anything else. The beginnings are quite difficult, and Louis gets mocked for his early 2000s handheld camera until he manages to capture footage that lands him a continuous work relationship with a morning news show. The potential earnings will awaken the Donald Trump inside the protagonist, who will try to create a business out of filming shooting victims.

If you thought Gyllenhaal reached the peak of creepiness in Donnie Darko, think again. Okay, in this film he doesn't play a guy who sees six-foot-tall rabbits and doesn't know the world will end, but he does play a strange guy. Very strange. I read that Louis Bloom blinks very rarely throughout the film, but I think he breathes equally rarely. The protagonist reels off miles of facts about everything (especially business and the like) with a professional manual-like memorized tone. We can't figure out if Louis is someone who doesn't understand human relationships or, more simply, doesn't care in the slightest. This is even truer when seeing his relationship with his perpetually terrified "intern" Ricky, a sort of comic relief for the film and personal servant for the protagonist. We'll root for Louis occasionally, only to regret it immediately afterward.

Dan Gilroy's debut is one of those with a bang. The muted and nocturnal colors, even in the rare outdoor scenes during the day, and the clean and refined shots, even in the wildest action scenes. Not a single drop in tension or pace, Nightcrawler is a rollercoaster ride through the most violent and media-driven Los Angeles. A great satire of a certain type of media that is trendy today; probably here Louis would have sold his footage to Quarto Grado or other quality programs.

Highly recommended.