Movie Review: Nightcrawler (2014)

An individual level view of the journalistic operations that are depicted in the character of Louis Bloom, which is played by Jake Gyllenhaal.

The story starts with a scene where the main character, Louis, steals a wrist watch from a cop where he was trying to breach a property when the cop showed up. The story develops as Bloom starts to make videos of random news-worthy events, soon as he witnessed an accident where a couple of men were filming the scene. He later on found out that the guys were running a small, private firm that sells such videos to mainstream news channels.

This lead him do the same, as this could potentially earn him some good money. The whole business reveals his real face as he started using unethical and illegal means to produce such videos. He started planning and executing events beforetime so that he might have the best shot and hence, he would be able to sell those videos to news channels at the best prices.

The ending of the movie is not very clear and it leaves the story open-ended, whilst showing his company with newly hired employees to expand his work.

Analysis: It is an important motion picture for the current age, as the world is shifting its form to the digital media and data is an important subject today. Ethics of journalism aside, but the movie wonderfully explains the content creators' limits and methods to extract content and earn appreciation or money. I also think that this should be taken as the view of future world, that is striving to receive appreciation and earn money on the digital media platforms, and how questionable it is to forget one's ethical and legal limits.