This film has creepy written all over it. It’s got Jake Gyllenhaal
in it and he is not his usual friendly self. In fact, this time around he is
extremely abnormal and very… well, very creepy. I was excited about this film
because I liked the trailer and thought that it ties into the disintegration of
the middle class. You know the kind of stuff that really gets this generation
pumped up. I am talking about the 1% and the 99% and all the hoopla that goes with it. This goes along with the rallying cry of "There's just not
enough good jobs to go around". It’s got the right kind of hook in place to get the
audience riled up and on the side of the protagonist. This unemployed thief
played by Gyllenhaal is named Lou Bloom and has a personality quirk bigger than
Travis Bickle from Scorsese’s, “Taxi Driver”.
The scenes open up at night and shows our hero trying to
steal chain link fence metal so he can resell it. He is unlikeable right from
the start and looks like he has been acquiring fashion tips from comedian Neil
Hamburger. There is a greasy quality to his hair that unfortunately stays
throughout the entire film. Unable to maintain steady work as a thief he
decides instead to take on the media by becoming one with it. Armed with a video camera he buys from a pawn shop he
becomes a stringer. That is he shows up at car accident sites, car chases,
murder sites and starts to record footage that he later sells to TV stations.
This has the American spirit written all over it but like I said…. The guy is
creepy.
Bloom begins a strange work relationship with a TV anchor
named Nina, (played by Rene Russo) that starts out innocently enough but soon
takes a dark turn. Bloom adds pressure to the relationship by pressuring her to
get physically sexual with him. We never really see what transpires between the two
because the scene jumps to the following morning. There are two scenes here
that really were kind of hilarious. One is a set of sprinklers that become
active and shoots water all over a lawn. Then the next scene jumps to a large
inflatable green blow up balloon guy like the kind you see in a used car
parking lot. The arms and head and flopping around uncontrollably by a fan that
is shooting up air through it causing it to dance spasmodically. Are we
supposed to make a mental leap here that Rene Russo’s character was bouncing
around in bed in a fit of orgasmic bliss? The director, Dan Gilroy, is not
telling and as an audience member I snickered and thought it was kind of funny.
The rest of the film is just bizarre. Lou Bloom films a
crime scene and gets tangled up with real bad guys. From there the movie takes
a life and death kind of situation that puts you at the end of your seat. There
is a lot of tension here and you wonder where the plot is going to go
exactly. This movie takes a lot of unexpected twists and it is very
entertaining. It’s great to see some originality here on the screen.
Bill Paxton is in all this too but I barely recognized him.
He plays a rival as another video stringer company that goes into direct
competition with Gyllenhaal. There are some preachy things that transpire when
the subject of work ethic comes up that are somewhat laughable. I say that
knowing full well that this rhetoric is coming from the mouth of a sociopath.
Even though the logic in this film is very twisted and Gyllenhaal is very
manipulative there is a solid message here about the media business.
I have to wonder if this was a tongue and cheek response to
the world we live in. The ending really ties it all together and Gyllenhaal’s
character seems to pontificate about the virtues of solid work ethic, honesty
and what it takes to become great at the job of creating media. He is addressing
his staff of modern age video journalists and I can’t help but wonder if this
is how this new generation see’s itself.
Gyllenhall finds a desperate and eager employee that will
work for next to nothing. This is someone for him to mold and manipulate and
even do dirty work. This new hire drives recklessly to get from one potential
job to another. This is real bare bones entrepreneurial spirit in action. They
team is armed with a used police radio,
a muscle car and two video cameras. They are willing to risk life and limb and
potentially get themselves killed just to capture a story for the public. This
is real dedication but it also borders on madness.
Are they victims lost in the old school of thinking? Are
they at the mercy of the old way of doing things? Is it better to be a street
hustler and to redefine the rules until you get them to work for your benefit?
I had TMZ rattling in my head towards the end of the film and wondered if this
was how they started in the media business. Maybe they just butted in where
they didn’t belong and then create their own footprint in the world of being
self appointed paparazzis’. Who knows.
This film gets the wheels turning. It gets you thinking
about the merits of a college education verses getting on the street and
creating something from nothing. It got me wondering if there was how the
younger generation identifies with the older generation. Do they see themselves
as victims? Or is this business of going to college and getting a job a broken
business model?
So many questions but I still have a hard time justifying
anything Gyllenhaal does on screen because he is just such an oddball
character. Even though there are some entertaining things about this movie I
was glad to see it end. This doesn’t go as far on the media commentary side of
things like the Tarantino movie, “Natural Born Killers” but this movie does
belong in the same conversation.
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