...an effective reenactment of some riveting real-life events.
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Note: In the following joint review, John, Jason, and Dean provide their respective views on the film, with John also doing the Video, Audio, Extras, and Parting Thoughts.
The Film According to John:
Director David Fincher ("Alien 3," "Se7en," "The Game," "Fight Club," "Panic Room") prefaces his 2007 movie "Zodiac" by writing, "What follows is based on actual case files." What you have to understand going into the picture is that the police never solved the notorious, real-life Zodiac murders, so you cannot expect a conventional resolution to the crimes. When I first saw the film in a theater, I remember several people leaving the movie house upset with the ending. They wanted to see justice done; they wanted a Bullitt or a Dirty Harry to bring in the villain. Well, it hardly needs a spoiler to tell you in advance that ain't gonna happen. The case is still open, the investigation is technically continuing, and nobody ever caught the killer. You live with that going in.
Maybe I liked the picture more than a lot of folks because I'm a lifelong resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, the setting for the story. For the sake of authenticity, Fincher used the Bay Area and other California locations extensively in filming his movie, in areas like the City itself, Lake Berryessa, Vallejo, Sacramento, and other local environs, all of them pretty familiar to me. That and the fact that I followed the Zodiac killings for years in the San Francisco "Chronicle" so I was familiar with the character names in the story made it all the more meaningful for me.
This is not your usual Fincher movie, with dark, shadowy scenes, grisly murders, and macabre irony, although you'll find a few of those elements in the film. Instead, it's a kind of dramatized semidocumentary, spending more time on the personalities involved in the incidents than on the crimes themselves. Not that the film doesn't deserve its R rating: Fincher doesn't shrink from showing us the brutal killings; it's just that the police only actually confirmed about five Zodiac murders, with the Zodiac himself claiming some thirteen-to-fifteen murders that the police could never verify. So, the story suggests a lot of killing off stage, so to speak, by way of letters the murderer wrote to the newspapers.
Period music also helps to establish the era, which covers the years 1969-1990, with songs from Santana, Donovan, Boz Skaggs, Three Dog Night, Jose Feliciano, Steely Dan, Marvin Gaye, and the like. And Fincher is meticulous in replicating the appearance of the day, right down to duplicating the "Chronicle" pressroom. (About the only complaint I heard from reporters who were there at the time was that the movie makes the pressroom desks too clean; real reporters are apparently a lot sloppier than their movie counterparts.)
Although the movie is a good police procedural that moves methodically through the available clues, its strong points are its characterizations. Fincher and screenwriter James Vanderbilt based their film on the best-selling books by Robert Graysmith, the editorial cartoonist for the "Chronicle" at the time of the events and the story's main character. Yet Graysmith only comes into his own in the movie's second half. In the beginning he's more of an onlooker, his curiosity building as the killings continue and the police run down false lead after false lead.
Graysmith's colleagues described him as a "Boy Scout," a straight-arrow type who became involved in the Zodiac saga as much to see the criminal caught as to sell books. But who can tell? In the movie Jake Gyllenhaalhe plays him in an appropriately understated manner. As the years go by, we see Graysmith becoming more and more consumed and obsessed by the crimes, to the point that when the police practically give up the case, he is still going strong investigating it, despite the police telling him to keep out. When Graysmith's wife Melanie (Chloe Sevigny) asks him "Why do you need to do this?" he responds "Because nobody else will."
Of perhaps greater interest than Graysmith, though, are San Francisco Police Inspector Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and "Chronicle" crime reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey, Jr.). Toschi and his partner Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards, who is rather the odd-man-out, getting lost among the other cast members) are the lead investigators, but it is Toschi who gets the most credit for his dogged pursuit of the suspects. He had already achieved a measure of fame earlier when Steve McQueen announced that he had copied Toschi's style of wearing his gun for the character of Frank Bullitt; so when Toschi headed up one of the most-celebrated criminal investigations in history, there was probably a note of headline-seeking in the proceedings. Again, who knows?
We'll never be sure of the real motivations for any of the characters in the movie, from the killer on down. Everyone got their fair share of celebrity out of it, not the least of whom was Paul Avery, who for a while pursued the story with as much zeal as the police. Did he do it because he seriously wanted to see the culprit caught or because he reveled in the publicity he was generating for the serial killer and for himself? One thing is clear: Downey's portrayal of the flamboyant, hard-drinking Avery steals the show.
Controversy? Sure thing. Should the newspapers have published the Zodiac's letters, his requests for attention, as they did? Did publishing the killer's cryptic messages contribute to his further killings, or did it help satisfy his murderous impulses for the moment? Maybe we'll never know.
Fincher develops a matter-of-fact atmosphere throughout the film, an intentional "Dragnet" type of approach. OK, I did find it a long movie in its theatrical run, and this Director's Cut is about four minutes longer, so I wish Fincher had cut things down a bit. Yet for me the movie never flagged or sagged. This two-and-half-hour film went by faster than 90% of the pictures I watch at half that length. Well, it's still Fincher, after all, and he does know how to build tension. One scene in a suspect's cellar generates more suspense than most horror flicks do.
I enjoyed "Zodiac," even though it doesn't move at the frenzied pace of most traditional thrillers and even though we know from the start how it's going to end. Think of it as you might "All the President's Men," an effective reenactment of some riveting real-life events.
John's Film Rating: 7/10
The Film According to Jason:
David Fincher's "Zodiac" has been called "Se7en: Part Two" in some circles. This film, about California's Zodiac serial killer, has more in common with TV's "Law & Order" than the Brad Pitt/Morgan Freeman film.
The year is 1969 and a string of murders starts in California: A boy and a girl in a secluded "make-out" spot. Another couple in broad daylight by a lake. A cab driver. Concurrent with each of these attacks, three newspapers in the San Francisco area receive letters containing a message in code as well as a note taking credit for the killings. At the San Francisco "Chronicle," cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) becomes enraptured with the story, as does a colleague, Paul Avery (Robert Downey, Jr.). Over the course of time, the investigation grows cold and everyone moves on from Zodiac...except Graysmith.
"Zodiac," running an overlong 158 minutes (or 2 hours 38 minutes), has little in common with director Fincher's arguably most famous film "Se7en." Both films center on serial killers and document the struggle to bring him to justice. However, where "Se7en" gave us a kinetic investigation and an unforgettable finale, "Zodiac" is hampered by the fact that it is based on a true story...and the Zodiac killer is still at large. Going in, we know there isn't going to be a neat wrap up to the story when the screen fades to black for the last time. It takes the wind out of the movie's sails from the very start.
It may be that we, as an American audience, are accustomed to all our stories having an end point, something that ties up the plot lines in a nice neat bow. That is the very definition of "climax," isn't it? When all the pieces come together and the entire picture is finally formed? There are instances when one plot line is stretched for the run of an entire TV series ("Lost") or a franchise of films (Harry Potter), but by and large we are conditioned to accept the wrap up. Outside of a couple paragraphs immediately before the end credits roll, there is no closure to the case. Mostly because it is still unsolved.
For a movie about a serial killer, "Zodiac" is suspiciously light on any sort of action. It is true the opening murder is bloody and somewhat graphic; yet an attack later in the film doesn't follow normal Hollywood action conventions. Blood doesn't spurt out of every stab wound nor does clothing become immediately saturated with the red liquid. It feels sanitized, in a way, as if Fincher was aiming to make a different kind of murder story.
"Zodiac" is more "Law & Order" than "Seven" in another respect: We follow the investigation from the beginning from the vantage point of two detectives (Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards) as well as from the point of view of the Avery and Graysmith. It's a very linear film in that respect. Everything the police know--and by default, what the audience knows--comes in easily manageable pieces. Sometimes those pieces are too manageable and obvious. An interview sequence takes great pains to point out, using various camera shots, the type of shoe Arthur Leigh Allen (John Carroll Lynch) wears; his watch is a Zodiac watch; he walks with the same near limp as the Zodiac killer. If the shots weren't enough by Fincher to clue the audience in, Ruffalo's David Toschi then gives voice to all these things. How much more obvious can it get?
There is just something wrong with "Zodiac" I can't put my finger on. It tells its story effectively and remains mostly engrossing. The running time is a concern, especially when the cops exit the investigation in the film's latter stages so Graysmith can continue to track Zodiac. While this part of the film might be true, it seems terribly forced from a critical view. How many times have the cops given up only to have an "everyman" get further than they did? Entirely too many, for the record. That's exactly what happens here, though we have no good reason to believe Graysmith's obsession rationalization. He claims he needs to see Zodiac's eyes and know it was him.
This cartoonist has no personal stake in finding Zodiac. His family was not threatened. No one he knew was killed. Why would be put his wife and children in harm's way? And why would the police allow him to do it? Toschi, among others, helps him out by granting access to evidence and information. That has to be some kind of security breach, not to mention a liability issue. Is it because his "friend" Avery was obsessed with the case and was driven to ruin because of it? Possibly, but the "friendship" between the two men is never fully explored enough to get the audience to that point. The only other reason could be in a line Graysmith utters fairly early in the film: he likes puzzles. And Zodiac is a puzzle.
But what is it that keeps "Zodiac" from being as acclaimed as it should be, especially with this all-star cast? Nothing happens, pure and simple. The cops and reporters are stuck in a reactive, as opposed to proactive, mode. They have to wait for Zodiac to give them a clue before they start running prints or handwriting samples. The most kinetic and serial killer-esque sequence in the film centers on Graysmith's encounter with a former associate of Allen's on...you guess it...a dark and rainy night in the middle of nowhere. This old man lives in a decaying house, his basement acting as storage for vintage films. Graysmith believes this man, this old man, is Zodiac at this point based on one line of dialogue. So when he's invited into the basement, the entire audience (and Graysmith) believe the inevitable is going to happen: an action finale. To spoil anymore would be wrong, since it is the tensest portion of the production.
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