way too long, and yet interesting

Rating: 7/10 (28 June 2007)

Something interesting happened while I was watching 'Zodiac'. I am not a big fan of the 'true crime stories' genre, and this film suffers from the 150+ minutes disease which seems to have spread widely in Hollywood. By the end of the first 30 minutes I was lost in the many details of the Zodiac serial killer case, and 30 minutes later I was on the verge of falling asleep, after all this is the maximum duration I can hold on similar themed TV series, and then I usually go to bed.
It is not that it is not a well made film. I was amazed to read comments from viewers and critics about David Fincher having made a 'regular' movie. Maybe the subject seems to be so, but the cinema work is sophisticated - as we advance from the late 60s to the 80s the digital camera reconstitutes the light, the clarity, and the palette of colors of the films of that time. So subtle that it neighbors geniality.
Yet the detective story is the weak part of the movie. Trying to be true to facts, it does not create enough tension, details accumulate and blur one another, and taking into account that most of the viewers know the story they are simply not enough interesting for more than half of the movie.
An then something happens. You realize that the movie is no longer about the crime or the criminal, we know all that is worth knowing about those, but about the men trying to find the truth and about the obsession that brings them on the verge of the destruction of their families or even self destruction. Acting certainly helps, with Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. each giving such a top performance that the next year Acadmy nominating committee will have a hard time choosing whom to bring to the big evening in L.A. Seeing Jake Gyllenhaal for example I had a flashback three decades back with Richard Dreyfuss building mountains in his living room to prepare the close encounter. One can say that this film is much too long, so long that it ends by being interesting.