"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Nightcrawler

tn_nightcrawlerI watched NIGHTCRAWLER back-to-back with FOXCATCHER. So far I’ve been able to keep the titles straight in my head though, haven’t mixed them up like I still do with RISE OF THE/LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS. But it’s not just the titles that are vaguely similar. This is another story about a bizarre, unfeeling weirdo pretending to be a human. The biggest differences from John Du Pont are 1) no fake nose 2) this guy comes from a working class perspective; he’s introduced sneaking around stealing copper to sell for scrap, like a junkie 3) he’s the protagonist.

It takes place in L.A and mostly at night, so it’s kind of like a noir. Jake Gyllenhaal (HIGHWAY, PRINCE OF PERSIA) plays Lou Bloom, the weirdo in question. I liked him so much in PRISONERS that I’ll see a movie just for him now, so I was excited for this even before the acclaim. Lou is the kind of weirdo who (correctly) thinks he can just walk wherever he wants to if he acts like he belongs there. When he’s driving home one night and sees a flaming car wreck on the side of the freeway he just pulls over, gets out and walks up to watch firemen trying to pull the driver out of the wreckage. You know, just curious. Wanted to see what all the fuss was.

When he learns he can make a living listening to a police scanner, chasing down these tragedies and shoving a camera in there, it quickly becomes clear that he has a natural talent for it. He’s not only completely willing to get in the way of cops and paramedics in life and death situations, he’ll also walk into a house where a shooting has taken place, film the bodies, move things around to make the shots more compelling. Here, get this happy photo of the victim next to this bullet hole. Perfect.

So it’s a story about his meteoric rise in this dirty business. He’s a nightcrawler, driving around the city from dusk till dawn looking for tragedy like a guy on the lawn with a flashlight looking for bait for his fishing trip. And with all the class and integrity of the worms filling up his jar. But you have to do all the judging on your own, the movie refuses to do it. It acts like it’s one of these movies about a scrappy visionary entrepreneur dipping his bootstraps in elbow grease, getting out some nails and plywood and building an empire from the ground up. When Lou turns down rival Bill Paxton’s offer to team up I instinctively got a “ha ha, stick it to him!” feeling before remembering that both of these guys are sleazeballs who should be deeply ashamed of themselves.

mp_nightcrawlerAfter one particularly disgusting act of soul-lessness at the scene of a fatal car accident the score seems kind of upbeat, like it would be if he were some sort of genius finding great inspiration. It might as well be the scene in IMITATION GAME where Alan Turing and friends figure out how to narrow down the possibilities and break the Nazi code. Except it’s a guy dragging a dead body away from a car so he can get a clearer shot.

Renee Russo (LETHAL WEAPONs 34) plays a not-very-moral if-it-bleeds-it-leads type TV news producer who Lou starts bringing his footage to. The more his material requires viewer warnings and hesitant clearance by the legal experts the more excited she gets. She asks him for stuff that pushes a narrative of urban crime pushing into the suburbs and threatening affluent, preferably white people. Not because she’s trying to push a racist agenda, but because she knows people love that shit. Race and class paranoia sells shampoo and shit. The news industrial complex.

That’s the media satire angle of the story. Good stuff, but I was even more intrigued by Lou’s impressive collection of inspirational business platitudes. He’s always going on about his hard work and being a faster learner and what makes a good employee or why you aren’t successful or why being willing to take on an internship will open up new opportunities. After haggling about the price of stolen wire he starts pitching himself to the buyer for a job or internship. Later Russo asks if he went to school and he proudly says no, he just likes to read about things, he spends all day online. It doesn’t seem like we actually see him online all day, that’s not really illustrated, but it’s a good explanation of that part of his obnoxious personality. He’s reading some dumbass websights about job interview tips and business philosophy and following every stupid word about asserting himself and being a go-getter and all this shit.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just all the creepy voyeurism, but I got a bit of a De Palma vibe from this one. And a touch of CRASH-era Cronenberg, that feeling of secret things going on at night, witnessing something you’re not supposed to know about. And of course I thought about FACES OF DEATH and those traumatic driver’s ed films that wove actual shots of gory accidents into narrative stories about driver safety.

Not that this does that. That would be fucked up. But this character’s job is pretty similar to that, with less educational value.

You hear what it’s about, you probly figure it’s gonna be a thriller, and sure, he does get involved in a bit of a plot. There is some suspense, some danger, some lying to the police when they show up at his apartment to interview him. But for it to be BLOW OUT or something he’d have to have some idea of right and wrong, he finds out about some bad shit and he’s compelled to try to do the right thing. That is not something that would ever, ever happen to Lou Bloom. He has no morals whatsoever. He doesn’t even have laurels, because they sound too similar to morals. His moral compass never had a needle on it. It would never in a million years occur to him to try to do the right thing, he’s just not that type of guy. He’s a full-on career man, he thinks he’s the good guy because he gets work. He has absolutely no clue that he’s a scumbag.

So it takes its time getting to the intrigue stuff, and I’m not even sure it needed to go there. You watch it to explore this strange underworld of freelance snuff salesmen. And come to think of it even that isn’t entirely necessary, because I would also watch a movie about Lou Bloom working at Subway or taking kids to Chuck E. Cheese for a birthday party or whatever. He’s just an interesting dude to watch do his thing. This fuckin guy, man.

It’s a story about scavengers. Scavenging for scraps, for bodies for lines of work in a bad economy. I read the kind of advice Lou follows and I think “that’s ridiculous, that’s for crazy people.” A normal person wouldn’t want to hire somebody like that, wouldn’t want to know somebody like that, wouldn’t want to be somebody like that, that’s for damn sure. But Lou has no such compunction, and you can’t deny that people like him often do succeed by having no moral or pride related objection to doing horrible things that sane people wouldn’t be able to live with. I think it’s a sick parody of the American success story.

It’s a funny movie, actually. But what a bummer.

I wouldn’t say he tops his performance in PRISONERS, but Gyllenhaal goes all out. He talks a little high and nasally, bugging his eyes out, pretty much never blinking, walking a little hunched over. When he’s on the job he pulls his hair up into a top knot, like it’s his samurai mode. He lives alone in a tiny apartment with one plant and a TV, but when he’s with humans he unleashes a torrent of fuckin jibber jabber. Talk talkety talk. He acts like the boss and all the sudden he’s the boss, he has an unpaid intern he can boss around and give inspirational speeches to, he has a company, he has the producer on a leash.

Act as if. Especially if you’re an ass. That’s how it works. Us non-asses would never act like that, so we end up in the passenger seat risking our lives with fucking Lou Bloom for the promise of a future maybe pay day possibly. Hey, didn’t that guy steal my chain link fence one time?

Excellent rookie directioning by Dan Gilroy, writer of FREEJACK, TWO FOR THE MONEY and THE BOURNE LEGACY. He also got a story credit on REAL STEEL but I guess they totally rewrote him. Here he’s working with world class cinemtographist Robert Elswit (THERE WILL BE BLOOD, REDBELT), who shoots hauntingly beautiful Los Angeles nightscapes that really capture the feel of the place without showing you all the usual spots we’ve seen a million times.

Check out NIGHTCATCHER, it’s good stuff.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 8th, 2015 at 12:46 pm and is filed under Reviews, Thriller. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

37 Responses to “Nightcrawler”

  1. Definitely liked this one, but I gotta say it was a bit too tame to really make it brilliant. A little bit of Verhoeven style brutality would’ve put this one over the top (in a good way), especially with the score they used which seems to totally clash with what you are seeing but perfectly align with Lou Bloom’s whacked point of view.

  2. Was waiting for you to get to this one, Vern. I loved this film. Like you, Prisoners suddenly woke me up to the fact that Gyllenhaal is tremendously talented, moreso than I’d given him credit for before, and I have actually always kinda liked him. This film…this is his A-list application. If I were the employer, I’d give him the job in a heartbeat. Amazing acting job, and one of the year’s best.

  3. Yup. My other fave from 2014. Treats you like an adult, but it’s still totally entertaining. Maybe I should give Prince of Persia a go…

  4. One of my favorites of the year, and would be so just for Gyllenhaal’s performance alone. Honestly, if NIGHTCRAWLER is intended as a satire/criticism of the media, then it’s a pretty heavy handed one that’s about 30 years too late to be timely or interesting. But, as a character study about a highly motivated sociopath who learns how to thrive in a cut-throat capitalist system, it’s fascinating and compelling front to back.

  5. Also, I’ve been on the Gyllenhaal bandwagon for a long time now, but I can see why it took others a while. The problem is, he’s handsome and charismatic, so people wanted to try to make him a leading man. But that’s not his vibe at all; he’s way too weird and intense for that. He’s played numerous outcasts and such before, but NIGHTCRAWLER is brilliant because it let’s him use his charm superficially to show a guy who does a bad but eager job of trying to wallpaper over the fact that he’s a complete monster.

  6. Great film, fantastic central performance, unique and spellbinding main character and a subculture that I’ve never seen on screen before. Also, has there ever been a car chase based around chasing another car chase, where the only objective is to chase not catch or get away?

  7. I hate it when people get things just because they don’t know they’re not supposed to. It’s not fair to the rest of us schmucks who live in reality. It makes me think of my cousin. Thankfully, she’s not an immoral psycho, but when we were younger, before life taught her differently, she got a lot of things she shouldn’t have. Like, we were both fresh out of high school, enrolled in college and looking for summer jobs. Neither one of us had ever had a job before. I took the first one I was offered – grocery store cashier. When I told her they were hiring more cashiers, she told me she wanted an office job, working 9-5, M-F. I looked at her like she was crazy and my mom rolled her eyes. Sure enough, she got it, working as a receptionist at a photography studio.

  8. I should’ve mentioned that the car chase is intense. And like Telf I noticed Craig Baxley Jr.’s name on the credits.

  9. Thanks, Vern. Better than Santa.

    This movie turned out to be totally up my alley, a long-fuse thriller with character and touches of action and bile, plus a social awareness that’s part and parcel of the story. It’s not enlightening, but it’s rare when a sharp attitude is incorporated (especially without a self-congratulatory feel) into how story and character unfold. Also thought it was a neat trick how good chunks of the movie grab you with pulpy elements, all the while calling attention to how pulpy elements get packaged for effect, yet the movie never crosses the line into hypocrisy.

    It also surprised me how sickly funny it was. Lots of current comedy seems to get off on making the leads assholes who you’ve got to love because, well, they’re the leads of the movie. They’re morons and/or meanspirited, but dude, it’s all in fun, and what’s your problem, what kind of dude doesn’t think this is fun? Nightcrawler distances itself enough from the people in its story that I could enjoy watching short-sighted people do unwise or unkind things, yet it brought in enough background for Nina and Rick that I felt protective toward them, warts and all.

    Aaaand … Jake Gyllenhaal. Talk about a guy who has picked up chops. His presence and range really took off ever since Zodiac; some people think he’s to tic-y, but those details read as character specifics instead of actor affectation to me – his characters in this and Zodiac and Enemy and Love and Other Drugs and Prisoners feel lived-in and credible and distinct, no?

  10. One Guy from Andromeda

    January 8th, 2015 at 2:08 pm

    Gyllenhall is definitely on a roll and it’s a great part, the script as a whole though was a let down to me. ‘Network’ handled this kind of story much more intelligently and thoroughly 40 years ago, nightcrawler had nothing to add so in the end it felt kinda hollow, like the essay of a high school student. Still, awesome performance.

  11. One particular detail that I really liked is that Lou tells everyone who adresses him as Louis to call him Lou and tells everyone who adresses him as Lou to call him Louis. That is exactly the type of social power play bullshit you would read on some dumbass websight.

  12. Andromeda — I don’t look at it as a media criticism; I think it’s more a criticism of capitalism itself, and the way it rewards people for their worst tendencies. Like Dan Prestwich said, if it’s a media satire it’s pretty much 30 years too late. But I think it sets its sights for a bigger target — hence all of Lou Bloom’s self-improvement business jargon. It’s not that the media is a heartless, amoral black hole of misery. It’s the whole damn system!

  13. You guys got me on the fence about seeing this one. At first glance, it seems like we got a WOLF OF WALL STREET/THE BLING RING deal here, where it’s about a topic (financial industry douchebags, vapid social media culture whippersnappers, irresponsible fear-mongering journalist fuckwads) that pisses me off too much to ever want to see entertainment made out of it. But then Vern and some of you are saying it’s more just a character piece about one fascinating dickhead with some thriller elements thrown in. That sounds alright to me. Then Mr. S comes back and says its an indictment of capitalism as a whole. Fuck that shit. So I don’t know what to think.

    PRINCE OF PERSIA was pretty much unwatchable, though, so maybe that’s the deciding factor.

  14. The way Gyllenhaal conveys the Lou Bloom character— his demeanor, his body language, his sense of disconnect (how he’s IN this particular environment, but seemingly not OF it)— distinctly reminded me of Jeff Bridges’s character from STARMAN, albeit reimagined as a bottom-feeding sociopath.

    I half-expected him (at some point) to remove his Earthling disguise and send a holographic transmission to the mothership, to update them on his progress assimilating to the humans. Didn’t happen though.

  15. One Guy from Andromeda

    January 9th, 2015 at 4:31 am

    Mr. Subtlety – I don’t think that Network did NOT do that (think of Ned Beatty’s famous system of systems speech), neither that Nightcrawler presents a particularly well argued case.
    In making Gyllenhall’s character such an inhuman sociopath it puts the blame not on the system, but on the individual. It’s entertaining to watch, because it tickles a social criticism “light” feeling, but in the end it basically says everything could work out alright if everyone behaved just a little bit more morally. A conservative message, far from a criticism of the system as a whole.

  16. Mr. M — I say watch it. Whatever it’s “about,” it’s better as a super entertaining character piece about this weird sleazy freako. And it’s one of the best performances of the year but not in a hoity-toity one-tear Oscar bait kinda way. It’s highly entertaining and creepy, actually it almost reminds me of MANIAC (both versions) or something, in that it forces you uncomfortably into the world of someone you definitely do NOT want to understand or identify with and doesn’t really feel the need to explain him or apologize for him. Any subtext is purely that; it works 100% on its own as a creepy character piece / thriller and even has a top-notch chase scene in it. One of my favorites for the year.

    Andromeda — I think Lou Bloom is a stand-in for the worst impulses of Capitalism. I don’t think at all it puts the blame on him; he’s just a freaky psychopath, and that wouldn’t be a huge problem except that rather than throwing him out on his ear, the system itself it set up to both need and reward someone like him. It’s not just news, it’s everything — I mean, he doesn’t particularly care about media or anything, it just happens to be a world he stumbles into. If it had been big pharma or fashion design or politics, it would have been just the same. He understands humans not at all, but has a vast grasp of slimy business-speak and an innate sense that his main attribute is that he’s willing to go farther than anyone else will, and that this is his key to riches. And he’s right — the further he goes, the more valuable he is to the system. Everyone agrees that this is making the world worse, but everyone is too entrenched in the system to stop it. Hence the clever bit of casual racism the network is pushing, not out of any particular racist thought, but because pushing that angle plays into the system better. Honestly, I don’t think NIGHTCRAWLER thinks network news is really the problem, or is particularly interested in criticizing the media or even the people involved. It wants to show you that even absent any particular malice (and Bloom, of course, is in no way malicious) the whole setup of a capitalist society rewards sociopathy. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t have to worry much about the Lou Blooms of the world, they’d just be hawking chain link fence somewhere, they’d be weirdos and outliers. Instead, the worse they are the higher they rise.

    Not that this is exactly a deep point or anything. I like the movie because it’s entertaining and has a great central performance. But I do think it’s a worthwhile thing to subtly comment on, particularly in this day and age.

  17. One Guy from Andromeda

    January 9th, 2015 at 7:23 am

    Mr. Subtlety: The pertinent issue with capitalism is not that it enables psychopaths to rise to the top, it is that it invariably turns every one into a psychopath who rises through the system. I basically agree with you, it is definitely an entertaining movie and Gyllenhall is great in it, his part is very well written. I just don’t agree that the social criticism was subtle in the slightest, i think it was a very heavy handed message not completely thought through. If in the end it didn’t wave the finger so obtrusively at the audience i think i would have enjoyed it more.

  18. Andromeda — fair point, I hadn’t thought of it that way: NIGHTCRAWLER kinda postulates that the problem is capitalism promotes people who are already monomaniacal sociopaths, where you’re more concerned with how it takes normal people and turns them into monsters. I wonder if that’s what they’re getting at with Rick’s character — that spending all this time with Bloom is taking its toll on him and gradually numbing his more humane instincts.

  19. For whatever reason, this movie left theaters really quickly in my area, so I unfortunately haven’t been able to see it yet (despite the fact that it really looks up my alley). What others have said about Gyllenhal’s performance really makes me happy that he has failed as a leading man. He’s far more interesting and chameleon-like in these smaller films.

  20. One Guy from Andromeda

    January 9th, 2015 at 11:37 am

    Subtlety: Maybe, also a great performance by that actor by the way!

  21. Andromeda — Yeah, Gyllenhaal is so crazy good that he kinda overshadows everyone else, but Riz Ahmed is really the heart of the movie IMHO. He’s the only one who seems to just innately know that what Bloom is doing is wrong, but he’s sort of powerless to articulate it or offer meaningful resistance. I just about dropped my taco when I realized he was also the star of THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST — aside from looking about 15 years younger here, every bit of his body language and speech patterns are flat out 100% different. I think he’s probably gonna be an actor to watch in the future, unless he gets stuck playing villainous terrorists forever. I hope people notice how good he is in this one and give him some more meaty roles.

  22. Riz Ahmed is a great actor. Check out Four Lions if you haven’t yet seen it, and Ill Manors too. He also raps as Riz MC but I’ve not heard any of his stuff so cannot offer an opinion on that.

  23. He’s also great in a micro budget British movie called Shifty.

  24. The Original Paul

    January 9th, 2015 at 6:27 pm

    Yeah, as usual I disagree with everyone on this one. Well, on some things. This film absolutely works as a satire of modern consumer culture and of the “making good” sociopathic capitalist culture thing. I thought it was very good indeed – but there was a few big things that stopped it from being great, for me.

    First off, I couldn’t ever get into Gyllenhaal’s performance. Sorry, but I couldn’t. When he did his crazy-eyed thing, he reminded me of Laurie Metcalf at the end of “Scream 2”. I guess it’s more understandable if you get a “black comedy” vibe from the film, since what I think Gyllenhaal is trying to pull off here is a comic performance. But it never quite works for me. It’s as though he wanted to play a sociopath trying to act like a normal guy, but forgot the “act like a normal guy” part. This may have been deliberate – at least three fairly major characters in the movie see right through him – and honestly, if he was supposed to be convincing then it would’ve been a dealbreaker. I think the point about Lou isn’t that he fools people, but that they see what he is but still accept him because they have their own desperate needs that he’s able to fulfill.

    I have a bigger problem with the direction. I agree with Sweetootho that the film was FAR too tame, and the reason was that the direction did not suit the script, at all. I know this is a criticism I level at a lot of fairly well-liked films – in particular HALLOWEEN (at least with the dialogue of the kids) and PROMETHEUS – but in this case the problem is a lot more obvious. Key character motivations are missing, scenes that should show you Lou’s soul (or lack thereof) just completely fail to do so, and even the opening scene – which features an act of violence that should absolutely be shocking and demonstrate just how vicious Lou is – just lacks any kind of impact. Emotionally the film never really connected with me, and for that I gotta blame the direction of it. It felt as though too much was edited out of the film in terms of character “moments”, and the bits that were there didn’t make enough of an impression.

    The worst example of this was at the very end of the film. Lou’s worst act occurs here, and it’s one where the film had the opportunity to metaphorically open Lou up and show us what was inside of him. Instead it’s played for cheap shock value (and fails, since it’s been fairly obvious what Lou was going to do – the only question was how it would occur – and the film, by conspicuously avoiding showing a certain thing on-camera, telegraphs this in a really obvious way.) I said it in the forums and I’ll say it again here: this was awful directing, quite possibly the worst bit of directing in an otherwise-good movie that I’ve seen all year. Just a massive missed opportunity.

    Man, I’m ripping into NIGHTCRAWLER here, but I did like the film a lot. As a satire it was pretty damn brilliant, and features what could very well be a career-best performance from Rene Russo. For such a long, meandering film, it really felt as though many of the character bits had been cut out, which hurt it. I wish I’d been able to “buy into” Gyllenhaal’s performance more; I also wish that it had been directed by someone who could really use the camera in such a way as to create some emotional impact. As it was, the film felt cold, sterile. And that’s not just because of the central character – SHAME also featured a central main character who was pretty much beyond redemption, yet Michael Fassbender turned in a brilliant performance in that one, seeming every inch the predator without ever looking over-the-top or cartoonish, and that film gripped me from start to finish. (Also, cock.)

    I still would absolutely recommend NIGHTCRAWLER though. All the supporting cast give excellent performances, the shots of Lou doing his job are eerily good and really nail the “creep” factor, the satire absolutely works, and Lou is a fascinating character even if I couldn’t entirely buy into the performance of the guy playing him. This isn’t the best film of the year, and I probably wouldn’t want to watch it a second time. But I’m glad I saw it in the cinema.

  25. I just saw The Guest last night and really like it, and I think Nightcrawler and The Guest would be a great double feature. I don’t know why yet, gimme a few days to figure it out

  26. I think I know what you mean, Timmy. I also saw THE GUEST recently and thought it was great. I think it’s like what Vern said about Lou Bloom in NIGHTCRAWLER, how he’s a weirdo pretending to be human, which makes him utterly compelling and creepy at the same time. I was thinking the same thing about David in THE GUEST. Whether it was Dan Steven’s charm or not, he was such a unique character, and you never knew when he was gonna break out of his practiced facade and go berko.

    Lou Bloom also made me think of The Driver in DRIVE, who is basically a sociopath in rebels clothing. So I reckon we could do a triple feature right there. Hell, during NIGHTCRAWLER, I was also reminded of Michael Mann’s COLLATERAL, and the psychopathic hit-man Vincent, which would make it a quadruple feature. Could be a long night.

  27. The Original Paul

    January 11th, 2015 at 3:52 am

    You two can add AMERICAN PSYCHO and RULES OF ENGAGEMENT I would think. And also the film I mentioned above – SHAME. Put ’em all together for a full day’s worth of films that will make you like human beings a little less!

  28. One Guy from Andromeda

    January 12th, 2015 at 7:06 am

    Not to stray too far off topic, but The Guest is hardly comparable to these other movies, or am i missing something? Sure, the main character is a psychopath, but it’s a trashy action movie that doesn’t have much more on its mind than cheap thrills (lamely choreographed fights and knee-highs) is it? How does that compare to American Psycho, Shame or even Drive? If the main character being a charming psychopath qualifies you’d have to have something like a triple million feature…

  29. 2014 was a banner year for Marvel solo character movies – comic book purists might not agree but I thought Nightcrawler, Whiplash, Birdman and even Fury were all great.

  30. The Original Paul

    January 13th, 2015 at 11:28 am

    Maxiao – I read the first sentence and was like “What the unholy heck?” and then I read the rest of it. Yeah, I hadn’t noticed that (mind you, I don’t think anybody would ever call me a Marvel fan, especially not after this year!) and it didn’t register with me that all of those films had the names of Marvel characters.

  31. The Original Paul

    January 13th, 2015 at 11:31 am

    And I didn’t say it before, but I agree with the praise for Riz Ahmed. Again makes me wish that the movie had given us more of an opportunity to see him as he really is, what motivates him, etc, rather than seeing him solely through the eyes of Lou. But what we do get is great.

  32. Original Paul— Thank God for your consistently & benevolently stringent observations around here. Admittedly you’re not the only one doing it, but you pare it down to the essentials best of all. Just sayin’.

    I won’t hesitate to opine that what Jake Gyllenhaal was exploring with developing Lou Bloom as a character was his PhD equivalent to Donnie Darko graduating high school, but it’s a damn shame he wasn’t nominated for an Oscar for NIGHTCRAWLER.

    He got completely under the skin of that character, and disturbed his audience merely by using his fingers to make these little drumming noises on the surface of the figurative table he was sitting at throughout the movie (either you know what I mean by that, or… wait; yeah, YOU do).

    I believe he is the 21st Century heir to Montgomery Clift, which means he’ll have an enduring career, albeit a misunderstood one.

  33. With a bit of a twink here and there, NIGHTCRAWLER would be the story of how JJ Abrams managed to bullshit his way to the top of the Hollywood food-chain.

  34. So, I liked this a lot, and I really do dig Gyllenhall’s performance, but did anyone get the feeling that maybe Bloom was written to be performed by Jim Carrey? I think there’s a whole lot of “hey I’m Dark Jim Carrey” all over a lot of the writing and performance, ESPECIALLY the performance.

  35. I don´t know. This movie went out of the way of making you hate this dirtbag excuse of a human being,which made me dubious about the whole thing. Not a single redeeming act or anything that is not complete sociopathic behaviour. I guess the business attracts those type of people, but is that anything new or revelational?

  36. Finally caught this one. What a great movie this was. Funniest film I’ve seen in a while.

  37. “A sick parody of the American success story”? I don’t think that’s any parody. I think that’s exactly what it is. This hideous anti-morality that is exalted and presented as an example to follow. The “business mind” as they call it. We never had this kind of evil here until US corporations began buying out our companies and destroying our national properties. Now, less than 2 decades later, it is everywhere, like poison in the water, like infection in the organism. The US “managers” give us local savages those “civilised” points as the way to success, teaching them and expecting them in the companies which they bought out and have twisted into copies of their ones or just destroyed and replaced with such copies. They call it the “American values”, the “way to win”, the “looking out for number one”, the “company identity”, “corporate policies” and many other such names. Which we used to know before as evil selfish amoral destructive parasitism. There is now an entire generation growing up here on those force-imported “American values” and it’s a horrifying sight to witness.

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