Nightcrawler At 10

I remember my first viewing of 2014’s Nightcrawler: a chilly November night where, after a tough university day, I embarked on an evening cinema trip. I’d only just started writing media criticism a few months prior and went into Nightcrawler knowing nothing about it. Movies have always been an addiction of mine, but Nightcrawler transfixed me so much that it took my obsession to a new level. Ten years later, its anti-capitalist themes have only become more relevant in a world where morals are becoming further compromised and the wealth gap is wider than ever.

We open on a montage of nightlife Los Angeles. The streets are tranquil and near empty, but underscored by disquieting music, indicating a hidden darkness. Our protagonist is Louis ‘Lou’ Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), who we meet as he’s stealing fence wiring from a restricted area. His thievery and subsequent attacking of a security guard activates our suspicions, but his goals are revealed to be far more relatable. He is looking to nurture a career and has seemingly been searching for a while. After selling the wiring to a local construction crew his attempts to negotiate his way into a job are rejected, owing to his status as a thief.

On the drive home, Lou comes across something he cannot look away from: a burning vehicle. But his eye is quickly drawn to the van of cameramen that swarm the scene and start filming. The lead cameraman, Joe (Bill Paxton), explains that they are stringers, also known as nightcrawlers. They race to the scene of breaking news stories, film what they can get, and sell the footage to television studios for broadcast.

Fascinated, Lou buys a camera and a police scanner to begin nightcrawling for himself. Although he starts off rusty, he proves to have a good eye, allowing him to capture memorable albeit graphic details of his filmed crime scenes. But his first taste of triumph, and the lengths he goes to obtain greater recognition, pulls the curtain back on his ways, speaking volumes about not just him as an individual but about the societal ideologies that have allowed him to thrive.

Writer-director Dan Gilroy, who made his feature debut with Nightcrawler, described the picture as a story about success. His observation is disturbingly accurate. The film’s narrative embodies the American Dream: an ambitious American finding a trade he’s good at, working extremely hard to maintain and grow the success he obtains. Lou asserts his belief in this philosophy early on – “good things come to those who work their asses off”. But Nightcrawler is arguing that this ethos, which has become deeply ingrained in American society, is inherently flawed; making success the ultimate goal with no consideration for the human factor. Other movies, such as Lee Isaac Chung’s excellent 2020 picture Minari, have examined this element of the American Dream, but the ways Nightcrawler explores the murky ethics of success and what that says about wider capitalism is truly spine-chilling.

Gyllenhaal’s Lou is the disturbing glue that holds it all together. What makes him so compelling is that we initially feel empathy for him. He is polite, hard-working, and charming, if a little socially awkward. He simply wants to find a job that he both loves and can build a career out of. This is understandable to anyone who has had to trudge their way through the workforce, from service workers to corporate executives. The film showcases how driven Lou is through various means. His mannerisms and formal dialogue feel rehearsed, as if he’s practised what to say and do around people. We also never once see him sleeping, whether it’s day or night. As Lou gets better at nightcrawling, montages reveal the rewards he is reaping, such as better camera equipment, an additional employee named Rick (Riz Ahmed) and a fancy new car, all signs of his determined work ethic.

But Lou is also a sociopath; motivated by self-interest with no empathy for others. Nightcrawler is great at obfuscating this through red herrings and slow reveals. When he begins nightcrawling, Lou must contend with the brash, foul-mouthed Joe as a rival, giving us a rude antagonist to Lou’s polite protagonist. When he fails to get a scoop on an important story, he is severely chastised by Nina (Rene Russo), the TV station director who Lou sells his footage to. This moment revels in the heartbreak that can come with disappointing a respected superior, something we’ve likely all felt at some point. Lou even has a defined character arc where he needs to learn ingenuity to get the success he wants. This arc could easily exist in a more light-hearted story.

However, the ingenuity in question is incorporating and expanding upon his criminal skills and disregard for others. He begins by filming crime scenes, then adjusting them to get better footage and then, by the third act, effectively orchestrating crime scenes to get the best story. His lack of ethics means he has no qualms with doing this, allowing him to achieve the success the American Dream envisions through ruthless indifference. Lou doesn’t care if people get hurt or killed so long as he wins. Whether it’s criminally sabotaging Joe, emotionally manipulating Nina, or leeching off of Rick’s labour, Lou’s ambitions take precedence over all else. The further the film progresses the more his mask slips, revealing him as the monster he truly is, culminating in the gut punch line: “what if my problem isn’t that I don’t understand people but that I don’t like them?”

Nightcrawler takes inspiration from many anti-hero stories, including The Talented Mr Ripley, The King of Comedy, and possibly Breaking Bad too. In hybridising these inspirations into its own unique equation, Nightcrawler creates a protagonist that we become gradually disgusted by as his actions become increasingly deplorable. However, just like the car wreck that Lou first stumbles upon, we cannot look away. Part of this is because his ambitions, whether it be wealth, fulfilment or companionship, are broadly identifiable with ordinary viewers. Yet this is primarily because Lou’s success reveals the flaws in not just the American Dream, but modern capitalist structures as a whole by arguing that they enable the worst kinds of people. Capitalism did not create Lou – his backstory is kept deliberately vague – but its focus on profit is easy to manipulate, as shady opportunists like Lou can work solely for profit, be it financial or personal, while exploiting those around them. This can be seen in many billionaires today, such as the weird fascist Donald Trump or the creepy, pathetic Elon Musk, both of whom have well documented histories of abuse, cheating, and lying to get whatever profit or glory they want. Lou’s attitude is not all that far fetched when men like these exist.

The supporting characters, notably Nina, showcase how capitalism’s narrow-minded goals infect everyone who lives by it. Nina directly profits from Lou’s freelancing efforts, despite knowing deep down what he is. She describes the best TV news footage to Lou as akin to “a screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut”. It’s a graphic image, but it morbidly piques our curiosity, as we want to know the story behind it. While Lou does manipulate her anxieties around job security to get financial, even sexual, benefits from her, Nina is similarly opportunistic. Their dynamic is mutually parasitic, as Lou uses her and her station to promote his work, while Nina uses Lou’s questionable footage to push fear-mongering narratives, making the film an equally captivating exploration of journalistic ethics.

Nina explains to Lou what stories sell best for viewers – stories of urban crime slipping into the affluent suburbs with preferably rich and white victims to lower class aggressors of more marginalised races; the gorier the better. The various crime scenes that Lou films are unconnected bouts of violence and accidents that occur in cities everyday, yet Nina and her team spin them into a news story about crime waves. Near the end of the film Lou’s biggest story is proven to be a drug bust instead of a home invasion, but Nina keeps the latter story going as it draws in more audiences. Once again, morality and humanity are traded in for the success that the American Dream, and by extension capitalist societies, make hollow promises for. There’s something quite satirical here about the portrayal of the news media, and capitalism, as something that feeds off of humanity’s worst impulses. It’s the best showcasing of news media hypocrisy since Sidney Lumet’s Network.

Because every main character is warped by this idea of success, all of them are at least a little selfish. Joe, as a rival nightcrawler, has the same goals as Lou, as well as his own idiosyncratic arrogance, just without Lou’s criminal skills. Rick is a homeless man whose labour Lou takes advantage of for a mere $30 a night, a sign of how capitalism often short-changes the working class. Rick vocally objects to Lou’s methodology, but continues to work for him because he needs a job. Even the construction worker who Lou tries to sell to at the start of the film, despite not hiring Lou, takes Lou’s stolen goods because it’s beneficial for him. Nightcrawler demonstrates in spades that no one can truly come away from capitalist aspirations morally unscathed.

This is all deeply resonant material bleakly captured through some stunning filmmaking. Gilroy’s direction and Robert Elswit’s cinematography utilise noir craftsmanship to generate a continually ominous atmosphere throughout the many sequences in the dead of night. The imagery revels in the lure and faults of capitalism, with its visuals of empty and busy streets alike capturing a sense of opportunity ripe for exploitation. James Newton Howard’s score, utilising a synthwave soundtrack reminiscent of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, captures both a striving determination and a sinister undercurrent lurking beneath the seemingly relatable goals. It’s a visually stunning film that transforms into a dark and terrifying thing of beauty, much like how the truth of Lou’s nature is slowly but surely revealed.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s remarkable performance is the cherry on top. That he wasn’t Oscar-nominated for this career best role is one of the Academy’s worst ever mistakes. Gyllenhaal apparently learned the script by heart, lending an air of uncertainty to Lou even as we find ourselves liking or sympathising with him. He seems lost and desperate for a break, but when he starts utilising his criminal skills to his advantage, we become horrified at ourselves for ever supporting this madman. Gyllenhaal walks the tightrope between these various character dimensions expertly, delivering an eerily riveting performance.

Nightcrawler is a film that, upon release, captivated audiences with its commentary and filmmaking. That it never got its dues during awards season is unsurprising but still disappointing. However, in the past decade, its observations have only grown more timely. It ends as a triumph for Lou, having achieved his narcissistic dreams with the police unable to prove his wrongdoing. But it also serves as a harrowing indictment of the American Dream and its capitalist backdrop, namely in how they are best suited to people who reject compassion or morality in favour of solely success or profit. Far too many of these types have reached positions of power or influence in the last decade, whether through continuous grifting or outlandish promises that they cannot possibly keep. It is ordinary people who have suffered as a result through denied opportunities, dwindling prospects, and even death. Overhauling the system is easier said than done, but we need to start embracing others’ humanity if we are to avoid catastrophe. Lou Bloom is a compelling, terrifically written character, but, with dangerous lunatics like Trump vying for power again, it’s now more important than ever to ensure that accountability and compassion exists, otherwise we’re going to find ourselves ruled by the Lou Blooms of the world.

We critics write about hundreds of films a year, yet there are a handful that we could probably write whole books on with the right motivation. Nightcrawler is one such film for me. It is one of my all-time favourite films – top ten material easily. A riveting, rich and masterfully assembled work of film noir, its gripping commentary and visuals are surpassed only by Gyllenhaal’s tremendous performance. Horrifying, compelling, funny and enthralling all at once, Nightcrawler is a film that just gets better every time I see it. I am hesitant to use the word masterpiece when describing films, especially ones that are only a decade old as of writing. But, when it comes to Nightcrawler, masterpiece is the only apt branding.