I left my heart (and my sanity, marriage, career and social life) in San Francisco

Rating: 8/10 (1 January 2008)

Sometimes getting the best out of a film depends entirely on what setting you watch it in. Sit down on a Friday night with five of your mates after a paintball game, a fridge filled with beer and nine boxes of pizza on the coffee table and it's a dead cert that you will not enjoy Zodiac. It would seem too long, too talk-heavy and too dark and after less than an hour, the DVD would go sailing out of the machine and replaced with Blade 2. However, if you watch it alone at night with nobody else in the house, all the lights turned off and your phone switched off and you'll be in exactly the right place to appreciate it fully. And what an experience it is. Zodiac, while not the greatest film in director David Fincher's back catalogue (this is the man that directed Fight Club after all) is like a twenty-first century version of a classic film noir. The lighting is grim, the story slow paced, the male-centric cast obsessive and paranoid and by the time the deliberately ambiguous ending rolls around, your eyes will be gaping wide and you'll be lucky to sleep for a week.
Based around the true life Zodiac case the film marks Fincher's return to the serial killer genre he previously did so memorably with Seven. No surprise then that there's a fair bit of expectation resting on it and your response to the movie inevitably depends on how familiar you are with his previous work. For one thing, the murders in this movie are not gory set pieces designed to get the blood hounds hot under the collar, but chillingly executed scenes of real-world horror. The pre-credits attack for instance is pure Fincher; awkward sexual tension hanging in the air as a young couple meet up for an illicit affair only to be stalked and set upon by a shadowy assailant who subsequently vanishes into thin air. Later this scene is echoed as a middle aged married couple are viciously slaughtered while lounging by a lake in broad daylight. Both sequences are tense and slow paced and the director's refusal to make them overly melodramatic adds to the sense of genuine brutality.
Furthermore, Zodiac is one of the darkest films released last year and even scenes that take place in daylight have the oppressive feel of shadows moving in. While the investigation into the killer takes up a lot of the running time, the story is mainly focused on how three different lives are affected by the murders. Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhall) is a newspaper cartoonist whose natural skill at code breaking and problem solving suckers him in when Zodiac starts sending cryptic messages to the San Francisco Chronicle. Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) is one of the paper's most respected journalists who takes a very intense interest in the case. David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) is the chief police inspector hunting the killer. Each one becomes affected in their own way as the story unfolds and before long, their private obsessions see marriages destroyed and careers ended, their day to day actions haunted by a constant sensation of hooded eyes watching their every move.
Naturally, as this is all based on a genuine story there is an added dimension to it and to his eternal credit, Fincher hasn't backed down from his vision in order to please the studios. However, it also means that the killer's identity is never fully revealed, a fact that some will find incredibly brave but others will be frustrated by, especially after the bladder-challenging three hour running time. Of course the director couldn't come out and say clearly who it was but he makes it clear who he believes was responsible and one of the final scenes where Graysmith confronts the suspect with neither man saying more than a few words or indeed, doing anything about it is a classic example of how a few minutes of silence can speak volumes.
Zodiac therefore is a film that rewards patience. It stretches on and on but every second is infused with detail and depth. For anyone with a serious interest in cinema as an art form, this one isn't to be missed but even those of you who are rolling your eyes thinking "pretentious sod" will find much it a rewarding experience, just be sure to book an entire evening off first as this isn't the kind of film you can just put on on a whim.