Disappointing snoozer.

Rating: 5/10 (19 July 2009)

The movie is set in 1970s for the most part and chronicles the events surrounding the Zodiac serial-killer in the Bay area. It is an okay movie that appears to be highly over-rated at 8/10 IMDb rating. No way this should be more than 6-6.5 or so. Fincher has had some good ones in the past so I was generous in giving it 5/10 but his last two offerings (this and TCCOBB have been rather ordinary). The movie might be more interesting for people who lived through the ordeal back in the days but for the rest of us it is just an open ended story that might be fictional based on all we know. There might be more than one person doing this stuff as there is no conclusive evidence to identify the Zodiac or to link Zodiac to ALL of the incidents shown in the movie. It presents a view point which may or may not be accurate in comparison with what might have really happened so to me it was a fictional account of what might have been the case (regarding Lee being Zodiac). Police is shown to be rather incompetent and quite bureaucratic when it comes to dealing with jurisdiction. Average citizens are more creative at decoding the cipher or identifying/following up on leads based on the police reports. It is hard to swallow a lot of what was shown as real or likely, more like the writer (Graysmith) exaggerating his own version for whatever reason, seemed disingenuous to me. Movies in this genre generally build up well in the last quarter but that did not happen here. Those who expect some sort of pay off or closure (se7en/Fight Club) at the end will also be bitterly disappointed.