movie review zodiac

Movie Review: Zodiac

Here's my review of Zodiac, which appeared in last week's WCP.

Zodiac

*****

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal; Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey, Jr.; Chloe

Sevigny.

Directed by: David Fincher

In Zodiac, director David Fincher meticulously recreates the northern

California of the late sixties and early seventies. No detail is too

small for his attention. It doesn't just look like people from today

with longer hair and tab collars. It feels and sounds like the

sixties. This realism, a departure from the stylized films that

Fincher has produced in the past, emphasizes the brutal truth of the

murders that the film explores.

The film transcends any sort of genre. It has aspects of a thriller,

and a police procedural and a slasher film, but is more than all of

these. The film spends remarkably little time on the murders

themselves, and the violence is mostly restrained. It is most

interested in the lives of the various men who investigate the Zodiac,

and what their search for his identity does to their lives.

Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards play the San Francisco detectives

David Toschi and William Armstrong who are tasked with tracking down

the killer. They spend years investigating the case, beginning with

the murder of a cab driver on Armstrong's birthday. The investigation,

and the frustration of failure, weighs heavily on the two. Armstrong

eventually gives it up, leaving Toschi to move forward alone.

The film moves easily back and forth between the police investigation

and the efforts of the two newsmen, Paul Avery and Robert Graysmith,

played by Robert Downey, Jr. and Jake Gyllenhaal. Avery is a crime

reporter, who descends into alcoholism after years of investigating,

and being personally threatened by, the Zodiac. Graysmith is just a

political cartoonist, and has no connection to the murders aside from

his personal obsession. His story is the heart of the film.

Graysmith, whose book the film is based on, occupies his time on

Zodiac minutia, and continues looking into the murders for years after

everyone else has given up in despair. He even goes so far as to have

his two young sons help him correlate the Zodiac killings to various

astrological events, urging them not to tell their mother (Chloe

Sevigny) about "daddy's special project." Graysmith does not remain

unscathed by his efforts. He eventually loses his job and his family,

when his wife can no longer take the anonymous phone calls and hours

her husband spends chasing down leads. But he doesn't give up. The

film is as much about his blind determination in the face of seemingly

impossible obstacles as anything else. Gyllenhaal plays the simple,

likeable young man, driven to distraction by his unflagging desire to

find the Zodiac, with an intense yet guileless sincerity.

A number of different men are put forward as to possible identities

for the Zodiac. Each seems plausible in his own way, and each has

factors that weigh against him. These men include Arthur Leigh Allen,

played by John Carroll Lynch, famous as Drew Carey's brother on the

The Drew Carey Show but delivering an understated, shambling and

disturbing performance here. Charles Fleischer also appears as

possible candidate Bob Vaughan. In a particularly eerie scene,

Graysmith goes to visit Vaughan to ask him some questions, and

realizes that Vaughan may himself be the Zoadiac when he discovers

that Vaughan has a basement. You'll have to watch the film to discover

why that is important. The film never comes out and says definitively,

but it is clear who Graysmith believes is the killer.

Zodiac is a long film, almost two hours and forty minutes, but it

moves smoothly, so absorbing that the passing of time is unnoticed.

Fincher keeps it tightly paced, but never rushes. He allows ample time

for both plot and character development. He has the help of an

impressive cast of actors to fill the minor roles. Philip Baker Hall,

Brian Cox, Elias Koteas and Donal Logue all give reserved but forceful

performances in roles that normally would have been given to lesser

known actors. It's hard to see any part in the film that could have

been cast more perfectly.

Fincher is more restrained in his direction than in previous films,

but is no less effective. He is rather more mature. He still works in

the same pallet of washed out grays and dirty olive greens and beiges,

and his eye for detail is as tightly focused as ever. The camera is

constantly in motion, so smoothly as to be almost indiscernible.

Except for the occasional effective use of period music, the film has

a soft but menacing underscore. His high quality remains, but the

bombast of Fight Club and the over the top violence of Se7en are

missing. Here, it is the characters and their relationships that are

more important than the action and mystery. We watch as the lives of

those most heavily involved in the hunt for the Zodiac slowly crumble

under the pressure of failure and morbidity. We want them to find the

killer, not even for the sake of justice but for closure. We want

their obsessive self torture to end.

The constant forward motion of the story, along with the occasional

dashes of humor and unnerving tension, pull the audience along through

all of the sudden flashes of insight and exciting discoveries, as well

as the frustrating false starts and defeats. The film does not have a

typical Hollywood up ending. It stays true to the reality that the

Zodiac was never caught and convicted. There is no flashy trial or

infliction of vigilante justice. But it does have an emotionally

satisfying ending.

With Zodiac, David Fincher has created his most mature and polished

film to date. It isn't flashy and slick, but it is incredibly

compelling. The characters are honest and interesting, and their

journey through the dark passages of the mind of the Zodiac killer

becomes our journey. Without question, it's the best film released so

far in 2007.

5 out of 5 stars