Bore-Fest

Rating: 1/10 (19 March 2007)

The story of the Zodiac could have been interesting but this movie proved to be a two hour and forty minute bore-fest. Most of the movie is spent on the investigation as scene after scene piles on pieces of evidence for the characters to ponder. The movie tries (and fails) to show you how the investigation adversely affected the lives of a reporter (played by Robert Downey Jr), a homicide inspector (played by Mark Ruffalo), and a cartoonist (played by Jake Gyllenhaal)  hence the poster's tag line "There's more than one way to lose your life to a killer."
The strategy of the movie is this: To show how frustrating and tiresome a murder investigation can be, the movie wants to put you through a frustrating and tiresome experience. To make us feel the way the characters spent long wasted hours sifting through the minutiae of the case in the vain effort to arrest a suspect, the movie puts you through a long 160 minutes of minutiae for you to sift through. The movie worked on me as intended  I was maddeningly frustrated and extremely tired. This is great story-telling? Nope, I'm not buying that pretentious load of baggage.
How did the Zodiac affect the main characters? I wouldn't know. The movie never tries to understand them emotionally or psychologically. The script doesn't give them much to do except sift minutiae and the acting can't seem to rise above the ponderous bleakness stretched across the whole production.
Zodiac is a waste of your time. Wait and see it on late night cable when you need to catch up on some sleep.