From the opening frames, 'Nightcrawler' invokes classic LA movies like 'Collateral' and 'Heat', an LA far away from the Hollywood strip, a grim, urban wasteland, whose inhabitants fight to hopelessly survive as late night security guards, copper thieves, car thieves, where the lights protect few, and the sun spares no one, as it washes out another day.
Gyllenhalls' performance is fantastic, he's done similar roles before, but this is the cumulative result, frenetic, disciplined, disturbed, tightly wound urban everyday psycho, spewing corporate psycho babble, from the the authors in the motivational speaking and improve your business section. I loved the early scenes of him, and how he meticulously approached the business of 'Nightcrawling', which itself if a bleak metaphor for the ugliest side of humanity. People compete, wake up at ungodly hours, to sell the misery of others to the highest bidder, so the corporations can drive their ratings up, Joe Citizen can feel informed, and bland, emotionless, hollow anchormen and women can earn their salary. This is peoples lives.
So, it's only fitting that a just slightly more deprived individual would rise to the top of the particular cesspool. His 'partner' was great, providing comic relief and humanity, a good straight man to the careening out of control Lou Bloom, who doesn't stop at murder, sabotage, sexual blackmail to 'make the most of his opportunities'. The 'Horror House' scenes and the rising action are the best in the film, tense, ugly, realistic, human nature at it's blackest. Again, I thought very similar to Michael Mann's work, and some of David Ayer, in it's depiction of that side of LA. As soon as I saw a few details, I knew the 'secret' behind the horror house. The scenes in the diner were amazing.
The scenes with the police, in the aftermath, and with Nina weren't handled well, I thought they were obvious and heavy handed, over the top, though I got the message, and liked it, it felt like a hammer hitting the audience in the head. Who, perhaps, as avid watchers of news, needed it. There was also a great subtext and undercurrent of the kind of philosophy Lou Bloom embraces, an indictment of the kind of corporate thinking and 'business world motivation' that I loved, as Bloom uses it to justify increasingly depraved acts,
A very strong film, that looses some steps in the final act, or the conclusion. I thought either a more realistic, or darker ending would have been stronger. I don't think I needed the message I thought the ending sent.