Nightcrawler - An Anti Hero Movie

NIGHTCRAWLER is a thriller based in the nocturnal underbelly of contemporary Los Angeles ans out the underworld of crime journalisim and dangerous realm of night crawling. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal who blurs the line between observer and participant to be come a star of his own story.

Jake Gyllenhaal got robbed for not even getting an oscar nomination for his brilliant performance. Okay so a warning - DO NOT WATCH THE TRAILER because it gives a the whole movie and all the major spoilers just like this post. Thank You

In this movie, Jake plays a character named Lou Bloom, who stumbles upon the world of nightcrawler. He becomes a stringer - someone who films breaking tragic or violent story and sells the story to local T.V stations. He is motivated,clever and a sociopath. Through out the film his drive to success leads him to take increasingly unforgiveable actions, but he still remains the hero for the audience who stay engaged.

Empathy

We tend to empathize with a character when we understand the motives behind their action.When despite disagreeing with a choice , we know why it was made. We know about Lou's situation that he needs money and seems a little off and knowing about this we understand why he is so interested and excited to learn about the world of nightcrawling. We empathize with it must feel to have a well paid secure job and also find fulfilling. As the movie goes on we understand the embarrassment of bring beaten.

Likeable character

Lou is a very hard worker. We learn this when he is understanding how to be a nightcrawler. He does whatever it takes to succeed and quickly becomes very good at it. This is because he takes interest with his job. Hard Working. Traits that tend to be impressive and respectable. Being a hard worker is an example for sympathetic character trait.

He is also polite. And we soon learn that he threats people in the same polite and calm manner and it becomes chilling reminder of the sociopathic behavior. We as audience tend to lose all the empathy for Lou as the movie goes ahead and at the end we are nothing but curious about Lou's future actions.

A Different Perspective

Having Lou as our eyes to the world we have a different way of looking at our world. The movie does not pass judgement to Lou's action , after all Lou did not build this world of nightcrawling of T.V news built for exposing instead of sensible education. He is just put into this world. This is actually a success story on how he became a owner of the news selling company from a jobless man. Lou's sociopathic behaviour helps him to excel in this field. We realize that he is supplying to what the society is demanding.

Nightcrawler has a crystal clear effect that keeps us engaged with Lou and allows us to question moral judgement.When we empathize with some who is not the ideal somebody and we look at the world with their eyes we have an amazing opportunity to learn about ourseleves.