There's a particular texture to Los Angeles after dark that suits stories of crime and self-interest to a tee. A desolate urban badland of freeways and fast food joints, there's this eeriness; this unnaturalness; this inescapable sense of menace; that seems to creep out of the concrete and set your nerves on edge. You can feel it in Michael Mann's Heat, or in Collateral a decade later. You can feel it in sections of Nicholas Winding Refn's Drive. And you can feel it in Nightcrawler, from writer-director Dan Gilroy, as it glides out of the darkness and seizes you by the throat.
Always at his best when playing characters gripped by obsession — Jack Twist in Brokeback Mountain, Robert Graysmith in Zodiac, or Detective David Loki in last year's masterful Prisoners — Jake Gyllenhaal is in career-best form as Lou Bloom, Gilroy's unsettled protagonist, and our tour guide through the sordid LA underbelly. Inspired after witnessing a car accident, Lou decides to carve out a career as a 'nightcrawler', videotaping crime scenes and selling them to a local TV station for broadcast on the 6am news.
Nightcrawler is in cinemas November 27. Thanks to Madman Entertainment, we have ten double passes to give away in each city. To be in the running, subscribe to the Concrete Playground newsletter (if you haven't already), then email us with your name and address.
Sydney:
win.sydney@concreteplayground.com.au Melbourne:
win.melbourne@concreteplayground.com.au Brisbane:
win.brisbane@concreteplayground.com.au
Australian Competitions Club
