10 Awesome Movies With No Sympathetic Characters

7. Nightcrawler

Dan Gilroy's neo-noir masterpiece is topped by a stunning performance from Jake Gyllenhaal as sociopathic, intrepid freelance news cameraman Lou Bloom, and considering just how difficult he is to warm to, the rest of the cast must seem fuzzy and affable by comparison, right?

Wrong. Every single major character in this film is a major piece of s***. Perhaps worse than Bloom is scandal-hungry morning news director Nina Romina (Rene Russo), who craves bloody crime footage to air on her show and fuel the network's dubious political agendas, while Bill Paxton plays another ruthless news cameraman who ultimately ends up suffering Bloom's wrath.

At first Bloom's assistant Rick (Riz Ahmed) seems like he'll come to resemble the movie's conscience, but by the end of Nightcrawler, he's succumbed to greed, fully immersed himself in the filth of crime scene documentation, and ends up shot dead for it.

It's a depressing but incredibly well-executed thriller in which you can only observe these awful people doing terrible things with your mouth wide open. There's no redemption for anyone, and even less to sympathise with.