Zodiac

Review By: Benjamin Lee
BenjaminLee@TheCinemaSource.com

Along with many other movie geeks, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the latest movie from David Fincher with a feverish excitement. Like most, I adored the fierce anarchy of Fight Club, I rewatched the nightmarish intensity of Se7en about a million times, I admired the flawless stylistics of Panic Room and I was even one of the few who thought The Game was wonderfully daring and ambitious. Okay so the less I say about Alien 3 the better.

So when Zodiac, endlessly and maddeningly moved around the schedule, finally grabbed a definite release date I was ready and waiting, drooling almost. Is it healthy to be so excited about a movie before seeing a single frame of it?

In 1968, California saw the beginning of a new cycle of fear and violence that would remain unsolved to this very day. The Zodiac killer first came to notice when he wrote a letter to the three main newspapers in San Francisco. He bragged of his killings and threatened that unless three specific codes were printed that very day, he would kill many more. It was the beginning of a stream of brutal killings by a merciless killer who left no clues and infuriated the cops on his trail.

Homicide Inspector Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and his partner William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards) find themselves flummoxed by the lack of evidence and the city becomes terrified by the possibility that anyone could be next. Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), a cartoonist for the San Franciso Examiner, becomes an unlikely ally in their bid to capture the killer. His dogged determination and methodical logic turn him into the only man out there with the ability to find the elusive psychopath.

In telling the story of one of America’s most notorious and sadistic serial killers, the filmmakers have to make an important choice. Do they stick as close to the truth as possible and let the narrative suffer (since real life depressingly doesn’t unfold like a movie) or do they fabricate to make for a more thrilling drama? More often than not, they choose the second option. Just look at the ‘true stories’ which bear no resemblance to their filmic counterparts (The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Wolf Creek for example).

It’s an admirable, if not entirely successful, choice that the makers of Zodiac decide to take. The lead character, played by Gyllenhaal, is based on the real-life cartoonist who wrote the book which inspired the movie. The film is painstakingly close to the truth and although this ends up becoming one of its major flaws, it does raise it into a different class when compared to other serial killer flicks.

The first half of the movie is phenomenally good and since the movie is just under 3 hours, that’s a lot of goodness to enjoy. The opening murder is shocking and reminds us what a skilled suspense director Fincher is. All of the death scenes in ...