This world of ours has some seriously sick, nasty people inhabiting it. One of these souls is Lou Bloom, a sociopath, thief, and all around terrible guy who acts as an eye for the audience into the world Nightcrawler presents us. It’s a world not so unlike our own, where the public is both intrigued and repulsed by the graphic violence that surrounds their urban life. In the cut throat world of network television the motto is “if it bleeds it leads”, with a team of well-equipped men sent out to document these vicious acts.

               

Whether they’re car crashes, murders, or acts of violence even more heinous, camera men like Lou are there. And you can be assured their busting through police barriers camcorder in hand, all to capture every bloody moment on film, as footage to sell it to the gore thriving news stations. These unsavory men are referred to as nightcrawlers, following their police radios and driving at breakneck speeds, their cameras hanging from tense arms all the while. Ultimately though, you have to ask the question of how far is too far, and how many of the boundaries can you begin to bend in a job this filled with bloodshed?

               

Jake Gyllenhaal puts on the performance of his career as Lou, making him one of the most unlikable but completely engrossingly nasty protagonists ever put to film. Echoes of other famed anti-heroes from cinema, such as Alex from A Clockwork Orange, or Travis from Taxi Driver can be seen in his portrayal, but he’s a creation all to his own.  Lou starts out as a mere thief, a bit slimy looking and gaunt, but once the gloves come off and he’s handed a camera a whole new personality develops. His second night on the job he’s already breaking and entering and as time goes by, it only gets worse. More than anything else though, he’s cold, alien, and terrifying, his slicked back hair and overly pronounced cheekbones making him look as malnourished and sick physically as he must be on the inside

               

We learn nothing about Lou’s past and little of his personality at times seeming to lack one entirely. Throughout the film he keeps the same, well-oiled business like tone, whether he’s on a date or filming a bleeding corpse. He loses his cool only once, but it’s a terrifying scene to behold as he wrecks his bathroom in a rage of almost unbelievable intensity. There’s a clear violence underneath his cool words and reassuring tone. You have to wonder what’s going on inside his head, hoping maybe he’ll find redemption. But as his actions grow more violent and his methods more aggressive, you have to wonder if this hope is mis-placed.

               

Lou takes on a partner early in the film named Rick, a young middle eastern man whose currently living on the streets and desperate for money. He remains the voice of reason in Nightcrawler, albeit one that Lou ignores and the only character you can really feel sympathy for. He’s just an unlucky kid who met a bad man at the wrong time and got sucked up into it, worthy of a mixture of pity and sorrow.

 

Lou’s boss Nina, the news director for a local station, is a different breed, almost as bad as the nightcrawler himself. You can still see the human in her though, just desperate for her station to flourish, and willing to take any means to achieve success. This greed blinds her from the questionability of whether or not Lou’s means are strictly legal. But even if she was aware, Nina isn’t the type of woman willing to give up a quick buck for something as insignificant as morality.

               

For such a dark and twisty script, the pacing of Nightcrawler is near flawless, up there with the best I’ve ever seen.  From the beginning to the end, everything is an intricately laid out stack of dominoes, each one falling in perfect harmony.  The ending on its own is one of the most satisfying conclusions to any story I’ve seen or read and while dark, perfectly lays out on one of life’s cruelest lessons. It’s very rarely the good guy who wins. It’s the one who willing to do anything, to step on and crush whatever lies in his path that ultimately will claim victory. It’s an unhappy, unsettling ending, but at the same time it’s not a happy, care free story being told and that’s what makes it the perfect finish.

 

Gyllenhaal’s performance of Lou is unarguably the best part of Nightcrawler, but it’s just the largest star on top of a well adorned tree. Everything about Nightcrawler was done just as it needed to be creating a dark and nasty, but amazingly true world that shows the darkness in all of us. News Stations wouldn’t air the gore if the audience wasn’t attracted to it, a modern form of the geeks at the freak show who used to bite heads off chickens. It’s a film that made me question my own values and decisions in a way no art form has in a long time. As the year is wrapping up it stands clear as the best film released so far in 2014, and one of the best of the 2010’s as a whole. To miss out would be to miss part of cinema history.

 

5 stars out of 5