Worthy But Turgid

Rating: 4/10 (28 May 2007)

Fincher is one of the best directors around at the moment. His credentials include Alien 3, Fight Club, Seven, Panic Room and the massively under rated The Game. Stylistically, and technically, the film is fine. But by his own high standards it is a dramatic failure.
The opening third of a long 2 hour 49 min running time shows him at his best. The violence is shocking, malevolent and unsettling with the audience sharing the bewilderment of the time. Whio is the killer ? Why is he doing this? What are the links ? When is he going o strike next? Then the problems start.
Essentally this is the story of Grayson the cartoonist turned author and his quest to unmask the Zodiac killer. But this takes over twenty years, the contact from Zodiac is episodic, and the genuine killings all take place at the front end of the picture.
Grayson does have a complex story to tell - and Fincher tells it. But ultimately in so doing he kills the dramatic tension of the tale. A journalistic maxim is "never let the facts get in the way of a good story" and this applies here.The labyrinthine detective work begins to collapse under its own investigative weight leaving space really only for devoted "Zodiacphiles" but not the standard cinema goer.
Surprisingly Fincher chooses to pass on two of the most dramatic moments of the story. The moment when two patrol car officers pass the Zodiac killer after he has slain the taxi driver is recounted but not portrayed, and the heart attack death of the prime suspect is told by post film postscript ! The soundtrack is wonderful "Hurdy Gurdy Man", Santana et al, as is the acting and dialogue.But ultimately an intriguing story does not necessarily make a great film, as is evidenced here.