Director: Dan Gilroy
Year Released: 2014
Rating: 2.5
Amoral Nosferatu-esque figure (Jake Gyllenhaal, ghoulish and emaciated) acquires (via nefarious means) a police scanner and a digital camera (as well as an assistant/patsy) to record grizzly crime and accident scenes in order to sell the footage to a TV news producer (Rene Russo) who lacks a lot of ethics herself. In a year of so many strong performances, Gyllenhaal stands up there with the best of them: with a script that purposely leaves out his character's back story (where did he learn to argue/rationalize like that?), Jake, with sunken eyes and a twitchy stare, makes his character's sociopathic obsession with 'success' and self-promotion creepy and real, like Harvey Levin without the sense of self-depreciation. The attack on TV news' sensationalism isn't done in a particularly new or creative light (crime stories primed to scare the audience? Get out!) and Gyllenhaal's antics get so extreme as the film progresses it stretches/tests plausibility and tolerance for him as the movie's core figure: he tampers with crimes scenes, gets a cop shot, allows his partner to be killed, alters evidence and somehow is never arrested ... oh, come now. At least Travis Bickle thought he was saving Iris....
