"Zodiac"

Rating: 10/10 (3 May 2008)

Zodiac. David Fincher's thriller about the Zodiac Killer is the best film of 2007. The Hitchcockian thriller is alive and well here. Fincher is a master of generating suspense and he creates a dark world for our characters to inhabit. Zodiac tells the story of how the infamous Zodiac serial killer who terrorized the San Francisco area in the early 70's effected the lives of four men. Jake Gyllenthal plays Robert Graysmith a man who is deeply troubled and somewhat morbidly fascinated by the case. Graysmith is a political cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle who received letters threatening letters and ciphers which Zodiac claimed to have his identity concealed in. Graysmith takes an interest in the case and as time goes by he becomes obsessed with tracking down the killer to the point where his wife leaves him. The screenplay is smart, it doesn't try to make a Hannibal Lector out of Zodiac. Fincher doesn't try to solve the case he uses the fact that no arrests were made in the Zodiac case to his advantage. Here the pursuit is just as thrilling as coming face to face with the villain. Zodiac also shows how crime can affect the psyche of the people involved. We don't have an over the top CSI approach to police work, we see what really happens with real detectives. The movie has four Academy Award worthy performances . Mark Ruffalo gives an outstanding performance as Dave Toschi the homicide detective assigned to the case. We see how he becomes mentally exhausted by his inability to find the killer. Robert Downey Jr is Paul Avery an eccentric Chronicle reporter who attacks Zodiac in his editorials. The most crucial performance in the movie though comes from Jake Gyllenthal as Graysmith. Graysmith is a character who is foreign to crime scenes that Toschi sees on an everyday basis but he becomes drawn to the case because he feels that someone should bring Zodiac to justice even after the evidence disappears and the case becomes cold. Rarely do we get a thriller as exciting as this. Zodiac is easily one of the best films of the new millennium.