Nightcrawler ****

Set within the neon-lit nocturnal backdrop of LA, Jake Gyllenhaal gives a brilliant performance as Lou Bloom, a creepy insomniac in search of a job. After witnessing a TV news crew swarming a burning car wreck, Bloom buys a video camera and drives around as a freelance “nightcrawler” in search of crime footage to sell to news corporations.

Gyllenhaal’s 30-pound weight loss(less drastic than Christian Bale’s emaciated frame in The Machinist(2004), but certainly intended for a similar psychological effect) gives him a gaunt, manic expression – he is a compelling contradiction; a loner, insect-like and volatile, yet driven and ambitious, often found spouting clichéd corporate jargon.

Centrally, Nightcrawler is an intelligent satire on sensational journalism. Both dark in theme and colour palette, the film depicts an amoral and fetishized obsession with violent imagery in the media. When Lou visits a local station, he meets the editor(Rene Russo) who shows an interest in his apparent flair for capturing sordid images; her station’s precept being “a screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut”.

As the narrative unfolds, newsgathering methods become increasingly extreme. The compulsion for finding more intensely graphic content is typified by the voyeuristic extreme camera close-up – where real life, or more aptly, real death is reduced to dramatization. Screenwriter-turned-director Dan Gilroy masterfully engages with these themes, placing Nightcrawler within a gritty, Michael Mann-esque, neo-noir hyper-reality. Riz Ahmed gives a very strong supporting performance as Lou’s assistant who gets inadvertently entangled in the central character’s morbid occupation whilst Rene Russo’s Nina is tough and uncompromising, desperately trying to save her failing network.

Gilroy’s picture is thoroughly enthralling and distinctive and even the car chase set piece finale - which may only be there to satisfy the broad action genre fans - is excitingly executed. Nightcrawler remains a lean, twisted and original thriller.

Black Sea **** Kevin Macdonald helms this tough, skillfully-made submarine thriller starring Jude Law; plunging the depths of the human struggle.

Jude Law plays Robinson, a marine salvage worker, estranged from his family and facing imminent redundancy. Still compelled to provide, Robinson agrees to helm one final salvage mission on an old ex-soviet (Foxtrot-class) submarine in search of a wrecked U-boat full of Nazi treasure. Assembling a team of craggy-looking, pugnacious ex-mariners from Britain and Russia, they agree to split the value of the lucrative haul between them – but as the sub plunges deeper and deeper into the dark abyss of the Black Sea, greed and the fear of death become deadly compounds to a catalyst of tension and insanity amongst the crew.

Macdonald’s film is most effective when it trades on the generic conventions of the ‘submarine film’ – a subgenre that falls somewhere between a high-tension pressure cooker drama and science-fiction – the vast emptiness of the ocean often echoes an environment as inhospitable as the blankness of space. Macdonald masterfully invokes a dark, mephitic, claustrophobic environment where the state of unease stems from the desperation of men being not only trapped in a void but also appearing to be void-like individuals themselves – down-and-out and hopeless – the quest for treasure almost replacing their purpose of existence. Jude Law gives an absorbing and visceral central performance and while his attempt at the Aberdeen accent is occasionally dubious, it is a character detail that manages to fit aptly against Robinson’s granite-hard persona. Supporting performances from Ben Mendelsohn and Michael Smiley also do well to add danger and realism to the proceedings.

Dennis Kelly’s script is tough and efficient but not entirely watertight; the narrative uses ellipsis to omit some of the more unbelievable or “difficult to explain” aspects in the story and while the moments of violence are explosive and dramatic, the character motives are less probable and should be understood more as a trope associated with the horror-inflected style of the piece. 

Occasionally reminiscent of Joe Carnahan’s human endurance picture, The Grey(2011) ,Black Sea manages to draw us into an emotional subtext amidst the frenetic action sequences;  Robinson’s existential crisis of masculinity is centrally engaging and transforms the narrative into something that is more profound and transcendent than its thriller conventions might suggest.