MY CINEMATIC ROMANCE #7:  JAKE GYLLENHAAL

Here’s another filmic sojourn into the roles of one of my favouritest actors. Last time I looked at Robert DeNiro while today it’s the difficult-to-spell yet ultra-talented Jake Gyllenhaal. Jake was a former child actor who has progressed into one of the finest leading acting stars around. Here are SIX of his best roles.

**CONTAINS MASSIVE SPOILERS**

DONNIE DARKO (2001)

This genre-busting maelstrom of sci-fi-time-travel-teen-rites-of-passage-meets-weird-super-anti-hero movie is obtuse but powerful. Gyllenhaal confirmed himself as a dark, brooding force of nature as the young American being haunted by strange emotions and demonic rabbits. Gyllenhaal’s bravura performance somehow knitted together the string of imaginative concepts and pain of growing up, making this a mesmerizing cult classic.

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (2005)

This beautiful heartbreaker incredibly lost the Best Film Oscar to Crash (2005); but we all know there is no justice in the world kids!   Jake Gyllenhaal’s flashy cowboy falls for Heath Ledger’s less verbose ranch hand in a moving story of forbidden love within a masculine western setting. Gyllenhaal and Ledger are incredible with Ang Lee directing Annie Proux’s story with a deft and wistful touch. Much is made that this is a “gay” film but it is not – it is a very human story which will break the heart of anyone who has struggled in love.

ZODIAC (2007)

While frustrating in terms of satisfactory narrative closure (because it’s a true story, Paul!), David Fincher’s crime classic contains a series of brilliant burnt-out-obsessive performances from Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jnr and Mark Ruffalo. Each character becomes fixated on the identity of the vicious and random Zodiac killer including Gyllenhaal’s comic-strip artist. It’s a slow-burning film which benefits from Fincher’s shadowy style and there’s a palpable sense of creeping paranoia throughout which chills the bones.

SOURCE CODE (2011)

I loved this fast-paced, sci-fi actioner with a twist-in-the-tale from Moon (2009) director Duncan Jones.  It’s basically Groundhog Day-on-a-train as Gyllenhaal plays a soldier stuck in an eight-minute-loop trying to both foil a terrorist attack and discover where his identity has gone. The action fizzes along and as the plot twists and turns rarely allowing you to catch breath.  Gyllenhaal carries the film with both physical and emotional power right up to the breathtaking surprise ending.

PRISONERS (2013)

It was a tough choice between this brilliant crime story and Gyllenhaal’s doppleganging performance in Denis Villeneuve’s weirdly compelling Enemy (2013); however, I chose this one as the story was so enjoyable. Fantastic acting from our mate Jake as the preposterously named Detective Loki tracking down Hugh Jackman’s kidnapped young daughter and her friend. Jackman and Gyllenhaal are both full of obsessive angst and rage in a taut thriller which had me gripped throughout.

NIGHTCRAWLER (2014)

Gyllenhaal should’ve been Oscar nominated for this incredible turn as sociopathic self-starting media-bloodhound Lou Bloom. His rendition of Bloom was of a ghost; a shell of a man with little in the way of backstory and yet through his dynamic performance we absorb the horror of his character. I was drawn in so much by Gyllenhaal’s magnetic performance, and the film is a compelling satire on the parasitic press as vampires draining the life out of humanity.