As we know, in the US, a company can now be regarded as “a person”, in terms of being afforded the same essential rights as its citizens. To my mind, the main character in Nightcrawler is the anthropomorphic incarnation of this Company-as-Person.

Louis Bloom is single-minded in his quest to progress. He plays by the rules, but is not opposed to bending and even breaking them when the alternative is failure.

He speaks quickly and with purpose, always pitching. He lives, breathes, sleeps with the one-track purpose of building bigger/ better/ more-Efficiency/ more Power. He is a shark that never stops.

He treats people courteously (over-zealously, even) when he is trying to win them over, dispassionately explaining the advantages and disadvantages of coming on-board with him and expects the same dispassionate, logical consideration from others.

He has Vision and is disappointed in others when they fail to see what he aims to achieve. He is disappointed when they allow their ‘Humanity’ to stop them from rising to the top of the world he is building.

He enjoys dominating negotiations, pointing out & deriding the emotional fallacies and “Human” needs of others.

“We have ten minutes to airtime, how much of this can we show?”

“You mean legally?”

Nina throws her eyes in the air and says “No, morally – of course legally!” She is Bloom’s first main catch, willing to bend and follow his Vision, without consideration of the weaker, inconsequential human qualities such as Morals or Ethics. She sees how Bloom will bloom into the future and she’s willing to desperately compromise her own dignity to get on board this one-last-chance, as she sees it. Everyone who is too “off-page” with this vision, too “human” in their reaction to what Bloom is building, is swept aside.

Bloom knows when to keep quiet, not to freely give away information. He watches and listens to the competition, learning from those bigger than him…

And when the time is right, he does whatever is needed to brush them aside and dominate the sector.

In short, if a company in fact were a person, it would be Louis Bloom: Psychopath.