Tony Gilroy directs Jake Gyllenhal, Renee Russo and Riz Ahmed in this neo-noir LA thriller were a hungry sociopath learns there’s big money money to be made in selling footage of police call outs to news channels and starts exacerbating the crimes he films.

“If it bleeds, it leads.” A towering central performance from Gyllenhal. He plays a human abyss who finds just the right urban dystopian conditions to violently flourish – akin to De Niro’s Travis Bickel and Phoenix’s Joker. If not better than those two? I’ll leave that thought there to stew in your head. The satire is unforced and unpredictable. The bursts of threat and fear have punch and lock you in. The city is a sodium glare hellscape; race through it, stop and film some gore, make a buck. Make a fucking buck! Just be ready for that performance review from a psycho raised by corrupt motivational speakers and YouTube business courses. This improved for me, grew into me, on a second watch. Stunning.

9