Truly didn’t know what to expect of this movie, didn’t watch it when it came out in the theaters because it just didn’t seem like it was my kind of film. But I decided to give it an opportunity, can’t judge a movie by the poster alone. Before watching I had no clue what it was about, thought it had to do with this ordinary guy who becomes a hero at night or something that had to do with crime fighting; I was very wrong. Even learned that Nightcrawler is in fact a term used for someone who is ”socially active at night”, like our main protagonist and every other news crew searching for exciting stories of the morning news broadcast.

It’s actually a type of thriller mixed in with this neo-noir style set in Los Angeles, the city where people go to make their dreams come true and people try to make it big in some way. That is the case of our main protagonist played by well-known actor Jake Gyllenhaal, who in a way reminded me of Christian Bale in American Psycho. It has to do with the way that they look like your everyday guy, but deep down there’s this dark ambitious side that doesn’t seem to satiate any time soon, also how they can manipulate others into their mess, and feel that they are above all other human beings.

The main character of this story is called Lou Bloom, and he is a guy that in the beginning of the film likes to steal things (either materials from a construction site or a fancy bicycle someone had parked around the beach) and try to sell them to get money, not forgetting how he always tries to negotiate the price. He doesn’t have a job, lives in a tiny apartment and when he tries to be a bit of a smarts at trying to negotiate a job position he gets rejected. Then one night he sees an accident across the road and sees a news crew capture the incident, when he tries to ask for a job in that field he gets rejected so he decides to take matters into his own hands. He gets a camcorder and a radio scanner to find any local incidents, he manages to get a close look at a carjacking incident and sells the footage to a local news station; this gets lands him a job there to find more incidents of local crime and accidents. With time and with the help of his young assistant Rick Carter (Riz Ahmed) he manages to step up his game, he gets a new car, lands a lot of news footage, and the respect of his boss and morning news director Nina Romina (Rene Russo). Then things start to spiral out of control once he misses a massive plane crash and we start seeing how far he is willing to go to get what he wants (even tries to manipulate Nina for sexual favors in exchange for him to get the footage) and then regardless of all the bad things he did he ended up happy… when in fact he deserved to end up with a punishment but only helps to show how sometimes justice doesn’t really exist in some  cases and how the most normal-looking people can have a very dark side to them.

Not going to lie while watching this film I got a bit bored at the beginning, I even thought of watching something else but then I thought ”Well you already started and some people like it, so let’s see if it gets any better”. It did for a while but I guess it wasn’t really my cup of tea. The idea of a man suddenly getting involved in the crime he recorded was an interesting concept, but it wasn’t all that amazing (at least to me, it’s just relative). I did enjoy Jake’s acting and how he tried so hard to charm people to get what he wanted, especially by speaking as if he were a total expert on business administration maybe he should give a class on that instead of working for the news. Oh well.

The movie was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and director Dan Gilroy’s directorial debut.

I rate this movie 3.3 out of 5 camcorders