Well done true crime flick

Rating: 9/10 (30 September 2007)

David Fincher really made his mark 12 years ago with the excellent 'Seven'. Since then, however, he's been disappointing - Fight Club was massively overrated, while The Game and Panic Room were both merely decent thrillers - but it would seem that Fincher is (nearly) back to his best with Zodiac - a sprawling epic mystery/crime thriller based around a real life unsolved crime. This is no doubt a very ambitious film - it doesn't quite work as a rounded whole - for a start, the characters don't really get time to develop well - but all in all, Zodiac is certainly a very good film. The film is based on books by Robert Graysmith and follows the events surrounding the Zodiac, an anonymous killer who murdered several people in the late sixties and early seventies. The film follows reporters and police officers as they investigate the Zodiac killings and endeavour to find out the identity of the killer. Eventually, the protagonists end up becoming obsessed with this investigation and the Zodiac consumes them...
The film is extremely well put together as you would expect, and Fincher has done an excellent job of recreating the time period in which the film is set. As the story spans over several years, the film does tend to make jumps from one time to another often, and this means that the characters and their personal situations have to take a backseat to the investigation, which is the backbone of the film. This is the way that the film has to be otherwise it would have ended up going on for several hours...but it does mean that the film doesn't feel like a complete whole. Zodiac is lead by three good central performances, Jake Gyllenhaal never really looked 'obsessed' to me, but at least he's an engaging lead. Mark Ruffalo was an odd choice for the police officer role, but it seems to be the right choice - and the film is topped off by Robert Downey Jnr, who gives yet another memorable performance. The mystery itself was enough to keep me interested, the ending was always going to be disappointing, but the film does manage closure in spite of the real life details of the case. Overall, Zodiac falls short of being a masterpiece; but it's certainly a very good thriller and it comes recommended.