[7]
Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey, Jr. star in David Fincher’s film about the investigation of the so-called ‘Zodiac’ killer in the late ’60s through the early ’80s. Downey and Gyllenhaal’s characters work for the San Francisco Chronicle, which begins receiving letters from the killer. As he seeks fame in the press, Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards are the cops who try for years to identify the Zodiac. Since the murders are committed in different counties, jurisdiction becomes an unfortunate obstacle in the investigation, which goes dormant in the late ’70s until Gyllenhaal’s character, Robert Graysmith, begins writing a book about the case and pretty much solves the mystery… even though it would take a few more years for the police to catch up with him.
There’s no denying the inherent drama and mystery surrounding the Zodiac case and Fincher does a fantastic job laying out all the evidence, presenting what feels like a comprehensive report about it. One’s enjoyment of the film essentially boils down to how much you enjoy police procedural stories, because the character development is kept to a bare minimum. For the first two hours, you’re not even sure who the main character is. In the last thirty minutes, it becomes clear Gyllenhaal is the one to latch onto, and that the story might be about his Captain Ahab-like obsession with the case. But until that eleventh hour focus, the bulk of our characters’ motivations is simply to ‘solve the case’. Until the last half-hour, Zodiac feels like a detached documentary. If you go into it expecting something like Fincher’s brooding, character-driven genre-piece Se7en, you may be disappointed. But if you temper your expectations, the story — somewhat anti-climactic by it’s true-to-life nature — is pretty engrossing for a while.
With Brian Cox, Charles Fleischer, Chloe Sevigny, Elias Koteas, Dermot Mulroney, and John Carroll Lynch.