A Well Done Account Of The Search For A Serial Killer

Rating: 8/10 (25 January 2008)

What we have here is a story based on the facts of the Zodiac murders in California in the late 60's/early 70's. Knowing that this was the background of it (although I wasn't actually familiar with the story of this particular serial killer) I found that this movie was a surprise in many ways. My first expectation was that it was going to be more explicitly about the Zodiac killings. In fact the killings themselves weren't really the centre of the story. Some of them were depicted, and there was some blood involved, but David Fincher, who directed this, avoided the temptation to make this a slasher-type thriller. This may sound strange, but the depictions of the murders - to the extent that they were depicted - I thought were rather tastefully done and avoided excessive gore. The movie then seemed to focus around the investigation into the killings, but even that turned out not to be the real point of the movie. Really, it became a movie about the obsession of various people to figure out who the killer was, and how it took over their lives.
Jake Gyllenhaal was brilliant as Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist for the San Fransisco Chronicle who starts up a friendship with reporter Paul Avery (a nice performance from Robert Downey, Jr.) who is the lead reporter on the killings.Avery's obsession with the case leads to a series of problems which eventually leave him out of a job, while Graysmith becomes even more obsessed, sacrificing his job and his family to eventually write a book about the killings. On the police side of things, Mark Ruffalo as Inspector David Toschi also finds his life being taken over by this investigation, while the only one in the movie who eventually escapes from this and moves on with his life is Inspector Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards).
As the movie progresses from killer thriller to crime drama to a study of obsession, I found myself becoming increasingly drawn into it. There's more than enough hints at the possibility of various rather creepy people who may have committed the murders, and in the end it all points to one suspect in particular, but the murders remain officially unsolved, and the prime suspect is now dead.
I thought the movie might have been a little bit shorter than it was ( it clocks in at 2:37) but aside from that this is a very well done story that keeps you thinking and keeps you guessing. 8/10