8 Iconic Movie Moments You Didn't Realise Were Taken From Other Films

5. Lou Bloom's Escape In Nightcrawler Is A Perverse Twist On The Usual Suspects

The Iconic Moment: Jake Gyllenhaal is on such a run of form that if one of his films doesn't get labelled an instant classic then something's gone seriously wrong (see: Southpaw), but none of his recent films quite match the jaw-dropping brilliance of Nightcrawler. A sleepless sociopath inexplicably even more psychotic than Travis Bickle, his Lou Bloom is a terrifying force of nature, talking his way up from a nobody to being a high-flying car crash cameraman. The film ends with Lou managing to do his best trick yet, working his way out of police custody following a high speed car chase by playing dumb, despite a irate cop knowing that's what he's doing, and walking away cool as a deadly cucumber. The Film It's Taken From: The set-up may be broadly different, the visual execution of Lou leaving the police station is identical to The Usual Suspects' jaw-dropping twist. He walks out of the building framed with an identical wide angle and there's a shot of his feet that directly replicates the reveal that Verbal's been faking his disability all along. The slow pan up is simply too identical to be a coincidence, especially when you consider what it means. More than a bit of sly homaging, the whole sequence works as a perverse reversal of Bryan Singer's film; unlike Verbal, who's pulled off the perfect con on the other characters and the audience, we know Lou's committed the crime, as does the police interviewer, and yet he still gets away scott-free.