If Source Code was the start of people recognising Jake Gyllenhaal as a genuine talent, Nightcrawler is the point where he officially became one of the most interesting performers of his generation. His Lou Bloom is detestable and engaging in equal measure, a spouter of cod business speak who in his first scene savagely beats a security guard to death. He's a coiled force of unknowing limits, making for a screen sociopath who is, if anything, more unnerving than the likes of Travis Bickle and Patrick Bateman. When Nightcrawler first reared into view, all the focus was on Gyllenhaal's performance, but it quickly dawned that this was far from a one-performance movie. Dan Gilroy overcame being the writer of Real Steel and The Bourne Legacy to make something nuanced and purposed. Shot mostly at night, L.A. comes alive as a character in its own right (that's an obnoxious phrase, but it's true), a lurid playground for Bloom to chase his new dream of recording gory crimes and flogging his wares to news stations. The brief daytime sequences, however, are far from just style-breaking padding. With Lou nightcrawling all night and reading all day, there's no time suggested where he can actually go to sleep, transforming him into an almost mystical being; an unstoppable force of human nature raging round the city's streets. Easy to read as a simple attack on the media and its increasing distancing from actual morals, the film works in many more complex ways, serving almost as a black joke on society's warped view on hard work and deserved success.
