David Fincher's best is challenging and not for everybody

Rating: 10/10 (23 November 2009)

"Zodiac" is a perfect match of visionary director and hard to condense material. James Vanderbilt did an admirable job of taking a larger than one life story and somehow adapted all these people and events (chronicled in Robert Graysmith's two thorough books on the subject) into a script that works. He should have received an Oscar nomination, along with Fincher, supporting actor Mark Ruffalo (portraying Inspector Dave Toschi) and of course, "Zodiac" itself for best picture. But the silly academy doesn't reward films like this often and I'll bet less than 20% of them even saw it!
As author James Ellroy says on a commentary track, this film is respectful of the victims. The intensity of a murder investigation has rarely been recreated more impressively than here. To compare modern (21st century) technology with what these folks had to work with in the late 60's/70's is to realize "Zodiac", whoever he was, had to be one of the dumb luckiest criminals of all time. His ideas were not original to put it politely and the fact he probably was a child molester really makes him a predator that treated society in general like a little innocent he abused for his own perverse reasons. Men who feel powerless and then get a big gun are the most dangerous fools of all because they're ticked off and want somebody, anybody to pay!