An Engaging Mystery Thriller Filled with Unexpected Twists and Genuine Tension

Rating: 9/10 (3 November 2016)

Zodiac follows a magazine company as a killer calling himself Zodiac contacts them. The police use the letters received to hunt down the killer, meanwhile the criminal writer in the company conducts his own search, and the cartoonist develops a sort of obsession with finding Zodiac.
The performances are pretty much what I've come to expect from these actors. Jake Gyllenhaal, one of my favorite actors, pulls off a pretty great performance, and Robert Downey Jr. is pretty great too. The biggest surprise for me was from Mark Ruffalo. I haven't been horribly impressed by him in the past, not to say he's a bad actor by any means, but he's just not amazing. Until Zodiac, that is. He's pretty fantastic, and definitely someone I'll be looking forward to seeing in the future. The rest of the performances are noticeably better than one might expect.
The whole story is just very interesting. It's presented in such a way so that every one of the three leads receives a pretty equal amount of screen time, and the story dedicates itself to wherever the most important stuff is happening. There will be plenty of times where certain characters aren't seen for long stretches of time, which isn't a bad thing, but rather keeps the movie going at a good pace, which is especially important for a movie with a run time like this one. It hits 2 hours and 37 minutes, and thankfully it wasn't at all boring.
Not only is the pacing great, but the story is filled with twists and turns, bursts of tension and intrigue. It's just such a fascinating story, filled with all sorts of possible endings. Part of why the pacing is so good is because of these scenes. Tension rises, and you as the audience begins to believe that the movie may be wrapping up, but then it surprises you yet again and continues. There were multiple points where I thought the movie was getting close to ending, and that was never the case. I never checked how much time I had left, partly to better immerse myself into the movie and not worry about the time, but also because I just didn't want the movie to end. It never fakes the audience out of the ending, but it seems like it could be getting close a couple times, so the audience is prepared for it to continue, but not just end in a few minutes.
The characters themselves are also just really interesting to watch. They play off of each other very well and are fleshed out when they need to be. Moreover, their relationships are well-developed over the course of the entire Zodiac case.
The choice to only show scenes relating to the case itself is both a good thing and somewhat a bad thing, in that there is little to nothing shown about the characters interacting with anyone or doing anything that doesn't involve the Zodiac. The characters are still well-developed during the time it takes to find Zodiac, and I appreciate that it was able to pull this off without ever straying from the case. I think that if the movie tried to switch to the characters and their own family conflicts and all that it would have been out-of-place, but it also could have added something to the characters. Not including that aspect didn't take away from the movie, however, so it's hardly something to complain about. I'm glad that the movie chose not to add any non-Zodiac material because it makes the movie focused and stand out more, but if done right it could have added to the movie, maybe. It's more something I just thought I should address and less of an issue in the actual movie.
Overall Zodiac is fantastic. It's got great performances all around, the pacing is fantastic, the characters are well-developed and interesting, the whole story is fascinating and tense, and the choices in presentation are smart. In the end I would definitely recommend this movie.