An Superb and Intricate Telling of One of the Most Intriguing Serial Killer Stories of All Time

Rating: 8/10 (19 November 2007)

Captain Marty Lee: You got any hard suspects?
Dave Toschi: Uh, about 90 an hour. I'm up to about 500.
Undoubtedly, one of the most underrated filmmakers working in the business today is David Fincher. His original and darkly grim vision as a director was responsible for four fantastic films (Se7en, The Game, Fight Club and Panic Room), and yet he hasn't gotten a single Oscar, Golden Globe or Critics Awards nomination. That's a real shame, but in Hollywood that's a harsh reality. It's easy to spot a Fincher film from watching it, it's pretty much always darkly shot and fast-paced. However, with 'Zodiac', the talented director's sixth feature film, Fincher takes a slightly different approach in his style. 'Zodiac' is still grim but instead of being fast-moving it's leisurely-paced at an unbelievably lengthy runtime of 160 minutes (2 hours and 40 minutes). This is not to say the film drags, because it doesn't. 'Zodiac' needs every second of those 160 minutes to tell it's complicated story of the real-life Zodiac killer.
The films spans nearly thirty years, beginning with one of the Zodiac killer's first murders in mid-1969, and concludes sometime in the year 1991. The movie is based off Robert Graysmith's book, who to no surprise at all is the film's main character. Graysmith is played by Jake Gyllenhaal, and he's a young and clean-cut cartoonist for the San Francisco chronicle. When the Zodiac murders begin, the office receives encoded letters from the Zodiac killer which Graysmith helps crack. As the movie progresses, we meet the other main character, Inspector Dave Toschi played by Mark Ruffalo, who is heading the police investigation of the Zodiac killer. The third character which can't really be considered a "lead" is one of Graysmith's unstable colleagues at the San Francisco Chronicle, Paul Avery (Robert Downey, Jr.), who along with Graysmith and Toschi becomes obsessed with solving the case. That's about all I'll tell you about the plot.
Although 'Zodiac' isn't as good as say 'Se7en' or 'Fight Club', it's a great film that will no doubt go unappreciated by most audience members. The biggest downfall of the movie is it's runtime, since most people these days have like extreme A.D.D. Most viewers will find it kind of boring and not suspenseful enough, but they'll forget to remember it's based on a REAL life story, and REAL life murder cases aren't like f_cking 'CSI' episodes where the thrills never stop and everything is so over-the-top it's implausible. During the entire two hours and forty minutes I was never bored and found the story intriguing. My only real complaint is that the film never becomes compelling or powerful. Maybe this was not the intention, but for a film surrounding a gruesome murder case and the frustration of solving it, there is little emotion within it.
One of the best aspects of the movie without a doubt is the acting. Jake Gyllenhaal is very good in a semi-dry role, but he is playing the role he usually always plays. With the exception of his performances in 'Jarhead' and 'Brokeback Mountain', I've never really seen Gyllenhaal play a different character. This is not to say he's not decent, but just to say he's not impressive. However, on the other side of the spectrum, Mark Ruffalo is absolutely sensational in a subtle but effective performance as the irritated but determined police inspector. Ruffalo steals the film from Gyllenhaal without even trying. In another great but much smaller performance, Robert Downey, Jr. adds some much needed comic relief as the drug addict/alcoholic newspaper columnist who pisses the Zodiac off by describing him as a 'latent homosexual' in one of his articles. Perhaps Downey is so perfect in this role because he is the role. All the other supporting performances are spot-on for the most part, two to mention are John Carroll Lynch (Carnivale, The Drew Carrey Show) who is brilliantly unsettling and creepy and Brian Cox in a very small but very memorable performance as obnoxious real-life lawyer Melvin Belli. Fincher, of course, does another extraordinary job directing this, and Harris Savides' cinematography is marvelous.
In conclusion, I highly recommend this for those who aren't expecting a fast-paced action-packed and awesomely gruesome suspense-thriller, but instead an intelligent, slow-paced and finely acted slice of history. It's probably the best offering of 2007 thus far. Grade: B+ (review written 3/2/07)