Nightcrawler

Dark and dangerous, Nightcrawler draws immediate parallels with American Psycho, but instead of showing the ugly side of 80s yuppie culture, it shows us the ugly side of people who are just really sick of writing CVs. The incomparable Jake Gyllenhaal plays Lou Bloom, a violent if determined self-starting go getter, as he sets his sights on a new career path: freelance crime journalism.

Lou is a man for whom people are clearly only a means to an end. As we follow Lou on his quest to become the best freelance crime journalist in the business, we see him going above and beyond the call of duty in one of the grimmest professional environments the media industry has to offer.

With a dialogue that reads half like the most intimidating cover letter in human history, and half like the creepiest boss you’ll ever have the misfortune to work for, Gyllenhaal raises the bar high in terms of crazy. Instead of discussing Huey Lewis and The News, he talks business acumen and sales pitches, and he is immensely unsettling as he does so. You’ll never realise until you see this movie just how scary a motivational speech can be, as he comforts his underlings with the words “I will never ask you to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself”. And it is in this manner that we follow Bloom threatening and blackmailing and just generally doing harm to people as he climbs the merciless career ladder, feeding off of violent crime and horrible accidents.

Owing at least in part to Gyllenhaal’s tremendous performance, writer and director Dan Gilroy is certainly on to a winner here. With a script that certainly doesn’t beat around the bush, Nightcrawler is well on its way to success.

Nightcrawler is released nationwide on 31^st October 2014.

Watch the trailer for Nightcrawler here: