Luna-tic fringe

Rating: 7/10 (20 August 2008)

****SPOILER ALERT**** The movie "Zodiac" chronicles some 40 years of the statewide hunt for the notorious Zodiac Killer. The man who terrorized the San Francisco Bay area in the late 1960's up until his last "chiper" or coded letter back in 1978 and even beyond that.
Having become the 20th century US equivalent of 19th century's England Jack the Ripper the Zodiac killer, who may be dead by now, may very well go down in criminal history as one of the most prolific and unidentified killers of all time.
The movie "Zodiac" tries very hard to stick to the facts which makes it very hard to follow at times. Since the facts, unlike a number of fictitious movies about the same subject, are as confusing as the mysterious killer himself. About a month after gunning down at a local Vallejo Calif lovers lane Darlene Ferrin, who died, and Mike Mageau, who survived, the San Francisco Chronicle, or Examiner in real life, received this cryptic letter by the person who claimed responsibility for the shootings.
The paper's ace reporter Paul Avery was put on the case but the pressure of tracking down and identifying the killer was just too much for him. Avery later ended up becoming one of the people on the Zodiac's hit list in a Halloween card that the killer sent him. This has Avery go off the deep end and end up a helpless alcoholic quiting his job and living on a boat where he eventually drank himself to death.
It was the combination of the Chronicle's political cartoonist Robert Graysmith and SFPD inspector David Toschi who ended up picking up the ball that Avery dropped and ran with it in trying to find the killer. That had Insp. Toschi almost drummed out of the department in being accused, unjustifiably, of faking one of the Zodiac's letters! This, SFDP's internal affairs suspected, was in order for Insp. Toschi to get his superiors on the police force to give him more manpower and money to do his job.
As for Graysmith he did uncover a number of clues about the Zodiac's identity, that he later had published in his best selling book, but they all for the most part lead to a dead end ! With the suspected killer, after being completely cleared by the San Francisco Police, dying some ten years later at age 58 of a heart attack. That was after, as seen in the movie, he was positivity identified by one of his surviving victims Mike Mageau in early 1991! You wonder why it took the SFPD all this time, some 22 years after he was gunned down, to get Megeau to identify by pointing the so-called killer, after he was exonerated, out in a grainy mugshot! When he could have done it by facing him in person, or in a lineup, while he was still alive and a prime suspect in the Zodiac killings!
The Zodiac went on to murder at least two more people and seriously wounding a third, in a murderous knife attack,in the movie until he just faded out of sight! With only his occasionally cryptic letters sent to local newspapers keeping him on the front pages.
It's been speculated that the Zodiac killer had murdered some 30 to 50 people since his admitted rampage against society began back in 1963; Six years before the Ferrin/Mageau shooting on July 4, 1969. But the Zodiac is only credited in the movie, and by the SFPD, of only 5 killings that's one less then those of the his New York City rival, in serial murder, The Son of Sam! This must have really hurt his already, with all the free publicity he was getting, very inflated ego as him being one of the greatest, together with the likes of John Gacy & Theodore Bundy, serial killers of all time!
You really couldn't expect that much from the movie "Zodiac" since it's universally known that the Zodiac Killer has never been as much as identified or, if he's in fact already dead, caught and made to face justice for his crimes. The film in its over two and one half hours running time did educate its audience in how difficult it is, even with the most up to date and state of the art crime fighting science, to capture an intelligent and murderous psycho when he, despite his enormous ego, doesn't slip up and, like in most cases, lead the police straight to his front door!