By Dan Cohen, Santa Monica Reporter
Two current films, both of them successful at the box office, are worth seeing in theaters, before they’re replaced by an avalanche of late year entertainments and Oscar contenders.
Nightcrawler
If there’s any justice in the movie business, Jake Gyllenhaal will be recognized by both the Screen Actors Guild and the Academy for his mesmerizing performance as a media obsessed sociopath in “Nightcrawler.” But the film’s relentless, acid tone may cause voters to shun the whole project. That would be a shame because even when writer/director Dan Gilroy’s tough, fast moving script skirts absurdity, Gyllenhaal anchors the movie in reality.
When we first meet Louis Bloom he’s breaking into a construction site to pilfer scrap metal. After apologizing to a night watchman who catches him, Bloom scuffles with the man and steals his watch. Right away we know the kind of character he is. But small time theft can’t satisfy Bloom’s simmering need for recognition and respect. A few days later he crosses paths with a freelance videographer who roams the streets of late night Los Angeles looking for accidents and crime scenes. Bloom immediately buys a camera and takes on a new identity.
What Bloom lacks in experience and gear he makes up for with feral drive. With little regard for privacy he imposes on an EMT team in the midst of an emergency, grabs explicit footage of
curbside surgery, and sells it to a local TV producer. Soon he contrives to vanquish his competition with tactics more apropos of a hit man than a reporter. As Bloom goes about making his reputation, no manner of self-deception or lawlessness is below him. But the more outrageous his behavior, the more gripping the story becomes.
Despite unflattering comparisons by several critics to Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver,” (from way back in 1976,) “Nightcrawler” has become a hit. Though both films focus on a violent sociopath, the comparison seems unwarranted and inaccurate.
Travis Bickle, as played by Robert De Niro, begins and ends on the lowest rung of the social ladder. Caught in a downward spiral of despair and delusion, the former Viet Nam veteran can’t find refuge form the junkies, whores and street criminals of lower Manhattan. (It was a very different city back then!) As his ability to cope dwindles, the taxi driver recasts himself as a street vigilante, then as a potential assassin of a political hopeful. Through it all he sees himself as an avenging angel, willing to sacrifice himself to cleanse the city of its worst elements. But in a sudden turn of events, his rage is redirected to a handful of scumbags who threaten a teenaged prostitute. In the end a quirk of fate recasts a mental case into a hero.
Louis Bloom is a different kind of narcissist. He gains strength and drive from the same elements that drive Bickle to despair. Carnage and crime stimulate him; the closer their proximity the more inspired he becomes, until he actually takes an active role in creating them. Despite a growing body count Bloom remains impervious to remorse, even when his actions endanger innocent bystanders. And when his plans go amiss he casts the blame on others. Lacking doubt, reflection or any of the ambivalences that restrain us from our baser impulses, Bloom is free to travel any course ambition dictates. Have we seen this character in real life?
It’s hard to imagine the propulsive energy of “Nightcrawler” without Gyllenhaal’s presence, but he couldn’t have made the commitment to his character without writer/director Dan Gilroy’s articulate script. In his debut as a director, Gilroy, a writer of intelligent action films, has given the actor an opportunity to plumb the impulse to voyeurism and expose its ugliest consequences.
Bill Paxton and James Huang highlight the efficient supporting cast, which includes a number of actual news personalities from LA TV. But Renee Russo stands out as the executive who encourages Bloom in the early going, without fully understanding who she’s dealing with; her rude education at the hands of Gyllenhaals ‘profoundly evil “Nightcrawler” is shocking and hilarious.
Fury
What does it take to create a memorable war film? And how does a mainstream movie about combat rekindle the dialogue about man’s inclination to war? To answer that we need to recall recent examples of the genre that offered fresh turns in a discussion that goes back as far as recorded history.
In terms of narrative filmmaking, Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” raised the bar for realism in the depiction of combat. Knowledgeable sources, including veterans, have reported the almost paralyzing impact of the director’s mercilessly vivid recreation of the 1944 landing at Normandy. The movie goes on from there to show how a platoon tasked with an almost impossible mission is slowly and painfully reduced to a few ragged survivors. At the end the movie has forcefully asked whether the mission was worth the death its terrible cost.
In 1988 Clint Eastwood’s ambitious “Flags of Our Fathers” took aim at the money machine behind the war effort and how it played havoc with a group of ordinary men who appeared in a photo of GI’s raising the flag over the Japanese island of Iwo Jima. Eastwood’s dark take on the exploitation of warriors makes a sad and powerful statement on the incongruities of war and peace. Scenes of war weary soldiers being humbled by government officials who use them to ply money from the public are almost as uncomfortable as the depictions of combat.
Now comes David Ayers “Fury,” a brutal essay on the nature of tank warfare and the devastation leading to Germany’s collapse in 1945. While the movie begins and ends with ferocious battle scenes the real revelations come from character.
Brad Pitt plays “Wardaddy,” a weathered tank commander who’s managed to keep most of his crew alive through a seemingly endless trek through the battlefields of Europe. As the story begins, the team returns from the front with the body of a trusted gunner still in their vehicle. Before Wardaddy and company set out on a new mission, the dead man’s seat is filled by a young recruit whose lack of experience adds another level of peril to their task, which, at this late stage in the war, has become a matter of repelling the Nazi’s desperate defense of their native soil. In the face of defeat, craven German commanders have forced women and children to take arms against the advancing allies. The last gasp of Hitler’s Third Reich has devolved into a futile war of attrition in which no one is spared.
Wardaddy, who depends on his men as much as they depend on him, understands his team’s strengths and weaknesses and the risk the new man poses to their survival. At the first opportunity, he indoctrinates the newcomer by ordering him to kill an unarmed prisoner. Ayer makes the point that the issue of war crimes becomes moot in the face of barbarism; there’s no room to distinguish between a POW and a combatant in the constant struggle to stay alive. But during a lull in combat, a different set of circumstances prevail. It’s at this point that the movie challenges us.
Other than the intimate details of tank warfare, there isn’t a single element in “Fury” that we haven’t seen in other war films. The plot, in fact, is as old as the genre itself. The same is true of the characters; most of them might as well be wearing labels on their uniforms that identify their function in the story line. But the force of Ayer’s direction and his commitment to the texture of both setting and character distinguish the film. And nowhere is this more evident than in Brad Pitt’s central and essential performance.
Pitt is the movie’s heart and soul. In its crucial midsection, while the guns are briefly silenced, he proves himself a performer of great skill and subtlety. Using only his face and body he reveals his characters’ inner turmoil.
After the Nazi retreat, Pitts’ crew, the crews of several other tanks, and a complement of infantry, occupy a small town. Once the dead are cleared and losses totaled, Wardaddy and his team are thrust into what remains of a civilian society. When he takes up with two German women the sergeant trades the warrior guise for a new posture. But others of his crew are not as sympathetic to the women. Suddenly Wardaddy is caught between fealty to his men and the line between right and. Pitt shows us, through his expressions and body language, the impossibility of satisfying two opposing loyalties, with quiet brilliance.
“Fury” concludes with the inevitable showdown and a coda that seems unlikely, but the performance that makes it great and the unflinching eye of director Ayre linger long after the chaos subsides.
