A Real-Life Mystery Of The Highest Order

Rating: 10/10 (4 March 2017)

Every year, thousands of mystery plots are created by film, television, and literature for our "viewing pleasure". Many (dare I say most) of them are conceived from a murder scenario. In the case of "Zodiac", however, it seems as if the biggest mystery of them all was right under our noses all the time.
For a basic plot summary, "Zodiac" tells the story of the Zodiac killer in California from the late 1960s-early 1970s. In the early stages of the case, police investigator David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and SF Chronicle journalist Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) struggle to catch the letter- writing, cypher-creating homicidal killer. In the end, however, it ends up being low-on-the- totem-poll Chronicle cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhall) who puts all the pieces together...or does he?
If you are a fan of action/adventure fare and like a lot of "flash" up on the big screen, please stay away from this movie. "Zodiac" is all about savoring the mystery, and thusly unfolds at pace that allows the thinking-viewing to do just that. Before seeing this movie, I had zero previous information about these murders (far, far before my time), so it was utterly fascinating to me to see the amount of time it took for everything to play out. At almost two and a half hours, viewers can't be looking at their watches or they will be missing the point.
It would have been easy for "Zodiac" to come across as a B-movie cop drama, but I think that the presence of director David Fincher ("Se7en", "Fight Club", "The Social Network", etc.) makes it into an all-time great. Fincher knows exactly how to walk the fine line of keeping a movie pretty much devoid of "action" (in the traditional blow/shoot-em-up Hollywood sense) from getting stale, and instead just continuing to build the tension with every scene.
Thus, "Zodiac" is a film I can highly recommend to anyone who is a fan of mystery fare. The fact that it is based on real-life events makes it even more intriguing. Just make sure you go into the experience with the right mindset and with plenty of time to savor this kind of filmmaking. It truly is an underrated gem.