*Lifting up the skirt of the night

We've all watched a crap film devoid of discernible plot and storyline, more than likely those are independent movies not big budget heavily marketed films from a major studio, but Nightcrawler starring Jake Gyllenhaal is one of those films. 

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Louis Bloom, a gaunt faced bugged eyed creep. Something is obviously wrong with the man but we don't know what exactly. Is he socially inept? A sociopath? A psychopath? Or is he riding a ray on the autism spectrum? The film opens with Louis breaking into a train yard and being confronted by security, you know that Louis is a bad dude when he attacks the security guard for his watch. After selling his stolen goods he's just driving around when he pulls over to watch two police officers pull a car crash victim out of her car just as the car catches fire. He then meets a stringer also known as a nightcrawler played by Bill Paxton who films the incident to sell to a local news station. Louis decides he can do that too and buys a cheap camera and police scanner. 

The rest of the film is of Louis finding gruesome events to film and sell to the news director of a low rated station. He also uses his lack of a conscience to force the news director (played by Renee Russo who I mistakenly thought was Michelle Pfeiffer at first) he sells his footage to into a sexual relationship and to sabotage his competitor by tampering with his van. 

Louis' lack of empathy comes to head when he films two people feeing a house after a murder and then goes inside to film the crime scene footage. He then uses the footage of the two murderers to track them down and set them up for a violent confrontation with the police just to film exclusive footage of their arrest.

There isn't much more to it, oh I forgot there is a teeny tiny bit about the police snooping around Louis asking how he got the footage of the murder victims. Instead of a film it feels more like one long commercial for the Dodge Charger Louis drives like a maniac in. 

*The title to this post was taken from the song lyrics to a song featured on Bob's Burgers.