Smart and Stylish, BUT All Trees, No Forest

Rating: 7/10 (4 March 2007)

"Zodiac" is one of the smartest and best produced movies in theaters right now. "Zodiac"'s stars are terrifically talented men at the top of their games.
Bonus: The script is full of unexpected witticisms that will make you laugh out loud.
For all that, "Zodiac" lacks a center, and it lacks a point, which is a shame, because the point was right there, shouting at the filmmaker, who maybe just didn't realize it. "Zodiac" is all trees, no forest. It could have been a great movie; as it is, it is very good.
First, what "Zodiac" does right: The production values are sky high. The film painstakingly recreates late 60s early 70s San Francisco.
Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey Jr. are the very excellent big names in a cast that is, from top to bottom, first rate. Everyone here is simply wonderful, wonderful. Brian Cox is delicious and unforgettable as Melvin Belli. Robert Downey Jr. is seductive and painful as a drug- and alcohol-addicted, showboating reporter. Mark Ruffalo is very sexy as a tough cop.
Each is given his pithy scene, his signature idiosyncrasy. Ruffalo eats animal crackers; Gyllenhaal is an Eagle Scout who drinks "aqua velva"s, Downey lives on a houseboat.
Everyone is so darn good you'll wish at least *one* of these very excellent performers had been given enough screen time to develop a character of some depth, and to move a coherent plot and theme forward.
And there's the rub. There is no main character here. It isn't Gyllenhaal, whose do-nothing presence is simply awkward in his early scenes. You think, "Why is Jake Gyllenhaal even in this scene? He's doing absolutely nothing..." and then, forty minutes before this long movie ends, Gyllenhaal suddenly becomes the protagonist of a movie that feels very different from the first portion.
That there is no real main character highlights another problem with the film. It has no point.
Each individual scene is excellent. Each individual performance is excellent. There is a suspense scene: "Are you sure we are alone in the house?" There is a slasher scene - knife, stabbing, blood. There is a "clueless chick in a dangerous situation" scene. There are newsroom scenes and police headquarters scenes and "judge denies warrant" scenes. None of this adds up to any main idea, though.
And that's too bad. The main idea was shouting and waving at the filmmaker: Zodiac craved publicity. He demanded that his letters be published in the newspaper. He killed for publicity. Did the newspapers that published him, gaining circulation and profits thereby, cause innocent human beings to die? By extension, do filmmakers like David Fincher, in making films like this, that make serial killers out to be glamorous and powerful, play any role in the loss of human lives? Serial killers tend to be losers and schlubs. they get away with what they do, to the extent that they do, not because of any great intelligence they possess; they aren't smarter than those of us who don't kill. They get away with what they do because of blind chance. They don't deserve to be made out to be larger than life.
Fincher could have used the heavy artillery at his disposal: fantastic stars, a terrific script, intriguing real life events, to have given this film some weight, some gravitas, some center, some trajectory, that it currently lacks, had he explored these questions, questions inherent in the material itself -- a killer who demands the front page, and who promises he will kill if he does not get it.