Nightcrawler movie Review | Nightcrawler movie Review | 2022
Dan Gilroy's thriller "Nightcrawler" is about an amateur cameraman who parlays his eye and his nerve into a successful small business,
deceiving, manipulating and exploiting everyone who stands in his way.
Shot by Paul Thomas Anderson's regular cinematographer Robert Elswit through what could be a Night Vision Rot filter, it's a film about how sociopaths get over on everyone else,
and a portrait of a disturbed, marginal loner that would fit perfectly on a double bill with "Taxi Driver" and "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer."
It's also a media satire in the spirit of "Network" and "To Die For" that takes the slogan "If it bleeds, it leads" to its horrifyingly logical conclusion. It's a comedy.
The movie's hero, Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), is a man living on the fringes.
He's first seen trying to cut through a chain-link fence to steal scrap that he can sell for pocket money.
While driving late at night, he happens upon cameramen filming a car wreck.
He asks the lead cameraman (Bill Paxton) what TV station they work for, and learns that they're freelancers who monitor police radios, chase down wrecks and fires and homicides, and sell their video footage to the highest bidder.
The rates aren't great, but they're better than what Lou is used to, so he buys a camera and gets in on the action.