saturday night at movies if it bleeds

Saturday Night At The Movies

If it Bleeds it Leads: New Fincher and Something Wilder

By Dennis Hartley

In a deliciously ironic scene from David Fincher's new crime

thriller, Zodiac, San Francisco homicide investigator Inspector

David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), stalks out of a screening of "Dirty

Harry". He is appalled at what he sees as Hollywood's obvious and

crass exploitation of a real-life case that has consumed his

life-the hunt for the notorious and ever-elusive "Zodiac" serial

killer, who terrorized the Bay Area for a good part of the 1970's.

(Clint Eastwood's fictional nemesis in "Dirty Harry" was a serial

killer who taunted the authorities and the media, and referred to

himself as "Scorpio").

That is one of the "little touches" in Fincher's multi-layered true

crime opus that makes it an instant genre classic. The director has

wisely eschewed the broad brush strokes of Grand Guignol that he

slathered on in "Se7en" for a meticulously detailed etching that is

equal parts Michael Mann and Stanley Kubrick, and thoroughly

engrossing cinema.

The director's notorious perfectionism serves the protagonists

well-they are all obsessed individuals. The aforementioned

Inspector Toschi and his partner Inspector William Armstrong

(Anthony Edwards, in a nice comeback) are the type of dedicated

cops that have could have strolled right out of an Ed McBain novel.

Master scene-stealer Robert Downey Jr. is perfect as Paul Avery,

the cocky crime reporter for the S.F. Chronicle who gloms on to the

case; his "partner" of sorts is the Chronicle's political

cartoonist, Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), who is the first

person to connect the dots (thanks to his obsession with

cryptograms and puzzles). The nerdish Graysmith eventually becomes

the most obsessed of them all, conducting an independent

investigation over two decades.

Fincher has assembled a film that will please true crime buffs and

noir fans alike. The combination of location filming, well-chosen

period music and Fincher's OCD-like attention to detail recreates a

cinematic vibe that I haven't experienced since the golden days of

Sidney Lumet (think "Dog Day Afternoon", "Serpico" or "Prince of

the City".)

And while we are on the subject of "media noirs"-warm up the DVD

burner and mark this date on your calendar: March 17. Turner

Classic Movies will be airing the rarely-screened 1951 Billy Wilder

film The Big Carnival (9am Pacific; check your listings).

Inexplicably unavailable on DVD (if anyone out there in the

industry knows why, do tell!), it is arguably the most cynical noir

ever made, and IMHO Wilder's best film.

Kirk Douglas is brilliant as Charles Tatum, a washed up, alcoholic

former big-city newspaperman yearning for a comeback (not unlike

the Robert Downey Jr. character in "Zodiac"). He swears off the

booze and sweet-talks his way into a job at a small-town newspaper

in New Mexico, hoping that the Big Story will somehow fall into his

lap.

He gets his wish when he happens across a "man trapped in a

cave-in" incident. What begins as a "human interest story" turns

into a major media circus, with the opportunistic Tatum pulling the

strings as its ringmaster. Prescient, hard-hitting, and required

viewing!

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