Leisurely but gripping

Rating: 8/10 (6 March 2009)

This movie, which revisits the events of San Francisco's Zodiac killings (as fictionalised in Clint Eastwood's first Dirty Harry movie) and the subsequent long-drawn out pursuit of their perpetrator, is not a particularly fast moving affair. But it is a constantly moving affair - its 2 hours and 40 minutes are never spent standing still.
Although the killings are (shockingly) included as part of the narrative, the film is more concerned by the effect the seemingly endless efforts to identify the Zodiac killer have on those engaged in the search. These include Mark Ruffalo's detective, Robert Downey Jr's loose cannon reporter, and Jake Gyllenhaal's obsessed cartoonist.
The performances are uniformly excellent and the story, told in chronological sequence right up to its apparent end, is never less than gripping.
An absorbing 160 minutes' viewing.