Jake Gyllenhaal has recently found his identity. His new movie Nightcrawler, out today, gives him a platform that is at once darkly familiar and incredibly distinguished. He plays the wiry Louis Bloom, a petty thief who hatches into a self-appointed Los Angeles news videographer. One night he sees a film crew capturing footage of a nearby highway car crash, zooming its lens into the bloody mess. His eyes light up. The next night he's on the road with a camcorder and police radio, driving to accidents and shooting amateur videos of broken glass and broken bones.

Louis prides himself on being professional even as he tightropes the dangerous ethics of his new trade. He submits his graphic footage to the director of a local news station (Rene Russo), hires an "intern" to help him navigate the road, and quickly develops a reputation as a fearless reporter and negotiator. The stakes get higher as he goes deeper. Soon enough he's prowling LA in a Mustang and filming dead bodies before the police have shown up.

Gyllenhaal looks sickly. He reportedly lost 20 pounds for this role, and you can see the hunger in his bulging eyes and gaunt figure. It works for this movie. Gyllenhaal has said he wanted to look like a coyote, and it's clear he's become one when he scavenges for victims and their private nocturnal traumas. He's seen as both a hard-working individual and a potential sociopath, speaking, sometimes comically, with arrogance and total lack of empathy. You gravitate to his entrepreneurial spirit and then his moral compass repels you.

This is not the "movie star" Jake Gyllenhaal that you remember. It's slightly risky to even refer to him as a movie star now. It's mostly a courtesy. The disaster that was Prince of Persia proved that he wasn't an actor ready to carry a blockbuster by himself, much less become a heroic action figure. Even in his bigger movies like Brokeback Mountain, his genius wasn't loudly taking over a scene. He thrives in quiet, stoic subtleties. He's generous in affording screen time to his other major actors, dipping in and out of the spotlight.

So is it fair to say that Gyllenhaal is at his best being a character actor? His looks and eclectic resume suggest otherwise, and the label seems reductive and derogatory rather than dignified. But over the last few years, Gyllenhaal has carved out a determined and method-y path, excavating challenging, damaged, dynamic characters, often with the same creative passion as the filmmakers that help form them. Plunging headfirst into roles has become his new currency as an actor. For five months he went on ride-alongs with the LAPD to research for End of Watch. He viewed 100 hours of interrogation footage to prepare himself as a detective in Prisoners. For Nightcrawler, he hitched rides with paparazzi, chasing sirens and weaving through high-speed traffic.

There is a renewed devotion to his craft and to the movies he chooses now. Is it a coincidence that his renaissance has also meant navigating the extremes of crime, insanity, and authority? In End of Watch (2012), he plays a prankster cop patrolling LA's South Side, wearing a GoPro camera on his chest as if auditioning to become Louis Bloom. He's animated and sarcastic, especially with his partner (Michael Peña), often tag-teaming drug busts and shootouts. "I want to be a detective," Gyllenhaal says at one point.

A year later, in Prisoners, he was investigating the disappearance of two little girls in a sleepy Pennsylvania town. His Detective Loki, like the movie, moves at a slower pace. You don't know his backstory but Gyllenhaal gives you clues: in his calm demeanor, his controlled aggression, his diverse tattoos, and his solitary trip to a Chinese restaurant on Thanksgiving. This man has demons, and as he hunts for kidnappers you're waiting for an eruption, like when he slams his keyboard into his desk after hitting a dead end in the case.

It's a slow descent into madness, an emotional arc possibly gathered from his troubled teen in Donnie Darko or cartoonist-turned-detective in Zodiac. He has a boiling point in Nightcrawler, too, screaming and slamming his hands into a mirror (he accidentally injured himself while shooting the scene). This time he's putting police into danger, too. When you see his slender neck and bony cheeks, you think of Matthew McConaughey's transformation for Dallas Buyers Club and his career resurgence after flimsy rom-coms. You wonder if Gyllenhaal is taking the same step, graduating from, say, Love & Other Drugs, to roles that mean something to him, that help redefine him.

His other 2014 movie, Enemy, directed by Denis Villeneuve, came out back in March. It got lost in the shuffle but it's a small powerhouse of acting. Gyllenhaal plays two characters that are doppelgängers, continuing to expand his facial spectrum between melancholy and disgruntled. Villeneuve also directed Prisoners so he knows a lot about this new Gyllenhaal. Now it's just a matter of time until their next project, when Gyllenhaal plays a cop, a detective, and a nightcrawler who are all doppelgängers of one another. That might accidentally make him a movie star.