TheRetroCritic

After trying to keep a troubled Hugh Jackman in check in last year's Prisoners , Jake Gyllenhaal is back with yet another dark, strange and, incidentally, really strong flick: Nightcrawler . Think Drive crossed with something a bit sleazier like David Cronenberg's Crash with some newsroom-themed satire thrown in. A super-skinny, crazy-eyed Gyllenhaal plays a small-time thief with big, if achievable, aspirations who discovers a new business opportunity through filming real crime or accident scenes and selling the footage to a news channel: the more graphic the footage, the better. Rene Russo is the TV producer buying what the dodgy freelance journalist has to offer, encouraging him the entire time to keep up the good work and deliver juicier and juicier footage. But even she did not realize the full extent of Louis Bloom's (Gyllenhaal) lack of morality and sociopathy. Director Dan Gilroy has created a truly fascinating, complex character in the vein of Robert De Niro&