one of the best films of last year. underrated and extremely well made

Rating: 10/10 (3 November 2008)

David Fincher is such a great filmmaker technically, but this is his best film in terms of pacing, which in my opinion is one of the best ways to judge a director. Seven and panic room are paced like a Hitchcock film and fight club is paced like A Clockwork Orange(please don't think that I am implying that ACO is as good as Fight Club b/c it's not even close), but this is getting into new territory for him. This is his most authentic film in terms of the people in it. I love seven, i think it is a great film with 2 very good performances(Freeman & Pitt) and 1 great one by Spacey, but this is fincher's best film so far because all the characters fit into reel life really well and vary so differently. This film is said to be about the Zodiac killer, which it is, but it really is more of a newspaper and media film. In my opinion it is the best film involving a big story in the newspaper since all the president's men. I don't particularly love Gyllenhal in this, just because he is a little too much of a pretty boy and clean cut for this paranoid sort of looserish character (maybe Guy Pearce, Cillian Murphy, or even Peter Sarsgard and couple more would have been better), but he is certainly not bad at all and Robert Downey Jr., Ruffalo, Sevigney, and everyone else in this film pretty much give perfect performances for the material they are given. That one little miscast is made-up for by the perfect casting of every other part. This film is 2 hours and 42 minutes long, but it does not feel close to that because it keeps you guessing, you care about the characters through their development, and it is also is just entertaining which is a quality that some great films lack. This film is in my top five of the year and maybe top 3. The ending of the film is so poignant and perfect.
I think this shows that David Fincher can have a complete career with films that evoke different emotions and after seeing this film I am really stoked for Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Fincher is now one of my favorite young American filmmakers because of his incomparable technical abilities next to spike jonze and because he can make thought provoking and versatile work as a director.