A Killer of a Movie

Rating: 10/10 (18 May 2007)

David Fincher is to date one of my favourite directors of all time. From his admittedly shaky, but not even remotely his fault, start with Alien 3, to the good, but not amazing Panic Room, I've always found him brilliant. Admiteddly his first, and the last movie I saw, Panic Room, were not his strongest movies. No, his strongest have to be Seven, and of course Fight Club, which is definitely in my top ten movies of all time. Yet I wasn't very excited over the movie Zodiac. I liked the fact Fincher was directing it, but my worry was the fact the trailer looked dull. And nothing really stood out to me whatsoever. Add to that the fact that Zodiac is pushing three hours, and I was actually at times dreading seeing it at the cinema. However, after being forced by a friend, I agreed to go see it today. And boy am I glad he convinced me to go with him, while Zodiac might not be able to stand tall amongst Seven and Fight Club, it is still the best movie I have seen all year, and it is a movie that will stay long in memory. It is not an easy going movie at all, and a lot of it is about talking, yet the talking is infectious and you just get sucked into the conversations, you begin seeing things differently, everyone is a suspect, and you try and piece everything together in your head. But it is the actual killings themselves that will haunt your nightmares for the longest, while they are not gory, they are shockingly horrific. The scene at the lake is horrific to watch, but its a later scene, involving a child and its mother, that will haunt me longest. I won't give it away, but the very idea of it just made me feel very ill. Zodiac however is not a movie about the killings, they are a subplot in reality, the actual movie follows the obsessions of the men who tried to catch the Zodiac killer. And it is this story that works the best.
The performances of Zodiac are easily one of its best features. Jake Gylenhaal is an actor that I've always found to be very talented, however it wasn't until I saw him in this movie that I really came to appreciate just how very talented he is. His character is easily likable, and he goes through many changes throughout the movie. But his character and performance is still top notch. Robert Downey Jr easily steals every single scene that he is in. His character is also very likable, but he also gets the very best lines of the movie. But the surprise performance here comes from Mark Ruffalo, who I have never really appreciated all that much. Yet here, here I really think he should win an Oscar for his performance. He is simply brilliant, had it not have been for Robert Downey Jr he would have ran away with the movie. Its Ruffalo's later scenes that work the very best, and it makes his character very memorable. Brian Cox delivers a brilliant performance as a smaller character, and Chloë Sevigny delivers an honest and memorable performance as Melanie.
The pacing of Zodiac, and running length, is going to be perhaps the biggest issue for a lot of people. Admiteddly my one fault for Zodiac is the fact that it does feel just that little bit too long. It never made me enjoy the movie less, but I did see an awful lot of people checking their mobiles for the time come the final half hour. The pacing of the movie also does not allow a lot of viewers to enjoy it as much as they might have done. The movie starts with a bang, and it continues to give a lot of big bangs for the next half hour. The trouble is, for the next hour and a bit it revolves entirely around the case, and not really the killings themselves. This is where a lot of people will get frustrated as this is where the movie requires patience. If you do have patience, and can sit and happily watch the cases and different suspects, then you will find Zodiac a complete masterpiece as I did, but if you get uptight over a lot of talking then you will get frustrated as my friend did. The ending manages to bring in more morph to it, but by that stage I was already content with the movie.
The atmosphere of Zodiac is possibly the biggest success of the movie. There are scenes that are executed with such skill and precision that you will sit there and your heart will thump like crazy. Any scene with a car in a deserted area is bound to terrify you. The opening sequence is initially creepy, later sequences, especially one in a basement, is really nail bitingly tense. The look and feel of the movie also makes the movie work to its full extent. It does feel like a period movie, and the score really gives it that extra feel as well.
Overall Zodiac is a truly masterful piece of cinema, as I've said not everyone will get it, many I suspect will find it boring. But for those of you willing to give it a try, and willing to have patience with it, then you will be vastly rewarded. Its a movie that deserves to be seen multiple times, as you will never truly appreciate how good this movie is until you've seen it quite a few times.