Nightcrawler is not a cult classic, and yet it has been awash in praise based on the scant merits of its “otherness”. It is an insufferable, noncommittal, flaccid attempt to evoke a creepy character who is somehow also a stand in for the vulture that is local television news (or possibly Los Angeles in general). This film’s biggest crime is that the concept is brilliant, and the execution completely voids all the imagination and thrill of its construct. The first half hour we are left to squirm and twist in the wind as the film fails to decide if it’s laughing at Bloom or not. Is he an emotionally disturbed antihero, an iconic Hollywood bloodsucker, or is this Asperger’s? Dan Gilroy (Renee Russo’s middle aged husband) is decidedly not a firework, nor could he be confused for an artist (see his IMDB page for supporting evidence). Gilroy’s debut film is an unimaginative copy/paste of the visual style of HEAT, and that’s about the nicest thing I have to say about the entire project. The whole depressing enterprise lands plenty wide of the mark.
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