Nightcrawler

Nightcrawler is the new Jake Gyllenhaal suspense film where he plays a down-on-his-luck creep who realizes he can make some cash by filming accidents, fires, and other human misery and sell it to local news (“if it bleeds, it leads”). He eventually sees opportunities to make sure his footage is better, framed better, more dramatic… ways that might not be strictly legal.

Jake Gyllenhaal is completely mesmerizing and amazing… playing a completely amoral sociopath… a guy who has Googled “how to talk to humans” and parrots back the words, full of business speak and spin to convinced people to do what he wants using their weaknesses or stupidity. He lost a fair amount of weight for the flick and his face is sunken in but his eyes are bulging and he knows how to use them to be really creepy and intense… and insane.

The movie itself… I wish it was better. It kinds of runs long and all the monologues Gylenhaal gets start to get tedious even though he is completely amazing saying them. Which is weird – he’s great but there’s only so much of it I could stand before it started getting old hat.

It is an award-worthy performance though.

I suspect some people might be more forgiving.