Flabby thriller

Rating: 6/10 (20 August 2007)

Absent an original script written for the screen, one of the essential talents of the filmmaker is knowing what (from the book, the play, the serial) to leave in and what to leave out. You get no style points for including it all and likely you get a poor film to boot. With Zodiac you get a film that dazzles and dazzles and dazzles and...Pretty soon you just want it to be over. Much of the dazzle is stylish and interesting but fails to advance the storyline. Hard to know where to place the blame for this but likely the director and editor were in cahoots. Too long by at least 40 minutes, there is a good, maybe great, movie in here, buried under excess celluloid. Director Fincher has established his reputation with a small repertoire consisting mainly of Se7en (a knockout), Fight Club (a TKO) and The Game (a slick psychological thriller in spite of the presence of 'names' Michael Douglas and Sean Penn). With the Jodie Foster vehicle, Panic Room, a little suspicion crept in as the film was too slick, too commercial, almost bland, the camera lingering on Ms. Foster's face when a more crisp look would have added to the tension. But such are the compromises forced into a production with a 'star'. And now we have Zodiac, a project with several preproduction puzzles it never seems to solve. First and most obviously, it is based on a well-known series of murders, so how to tell the story and create and sustain some dramatic tension when the resolution (or lack thereof) is widely known? Secondly, it is based on a popular book written by a peripheral player in the developing news story who is consequently a character in the movie, so how to tell what is essentially a first person narrative and still introduce expository material? And thirdly, it is a story of many parts, ranging over several decades with numerous important characters, so how to tell the story and still provide the audience with a singular POV, a third person narrative(?), first person(?), where is the satisfying continuity with which the audience can identify? In the case of Zodiac, the sum of its parts is impressive film-making that fail to add up to an impressive film. Unfortunately there are simply too many parts. What starts out reasonably enough with a pre-opening credit murder and proceeds in what appears to be the tried-and-true, story-told-through-the-eyes-of-an-innocent, becomes a seemingly endless series of storyboarded vignettes artlessly separated with elided time notations, "two weeks later" fade, "three months later" fade, "two years later" fade, my gawd, there must be thirty of em! The casting is wonderful, not a false note in the lot, especially Robert Downey, Jr. who mesmerizes as the burnt-out crime beat reporter Paul Avery, who is so consistently good it has become almost trite to sing his praises. They should just give this guy an Academy Award every year and be done with it. Jake Gyllenhaal does a nice job with a thankless stock role and Mark Ruffalo rings true as the frustrated homicide detective. There is little dropoff in quality as you get into the supporting roles and bit players, Chloe Sevigny as the long suffering wife, Anthony Edwards as the bland partner and an amusing turn from Brian Cox as the pretentious, self-absorbed Melvin Belli. The cinematography is crisp and inventive, the score a period-correct mix of rock and R&B, the dialogue feels natural and unforced with a satisfying mix of cynicism, humor and angst, the production and art design, costumes, locations, hairstyles and sundry props perfectly capture the period and the communications, written and voice, with which the Zodiac taunts the authorities, provides a nice over-the-shoulder feel to the proceedings. So where did they go wrong? In the early going it looks as though we'll see the story through the eyes of the Gyllenhaal/Graysmith character but he is supplanted by a blinding series of set-piece murders and near murders larded with the obligatory gnashing of investigative teeth which then give way to a police procedural coupled with the deteriorating Downey/Avery character before we return to the Gyllenhaal/Graysmith character for a really bang-up, creepy, skin-crawly closing thirty minutes, all the while the director advancing the narrative line with the aforementioned typeset screen cards. My best guess is that Fincher should have stayed with the Gyllenhaal character as first person narrator. He is a nice wide eyed innocent in the newsroom, whose discovery of the various players and his subsequent discovery of critical evidence would nicely serve as our discovery. Using the newcomer in this way is an old plot device but nonetheless satisfying and effective. It could have worked. Perhaps that's what Fincher thinks he did. Alternatively, how about largely eliminating the Gyllenhaal character and going with a straightforward police procedural. Let the Ruffalo character run with it, let his frustration be our frustration. Let us suffer as he descends into late-career with this failure of a case around his neck. It could work. Perhaps that's what Fincher thinks he did. Alas, the film tries to be all things to all men. And fails to be any one thing. By the way, I wouldn't make any changes that would jeopardize the last thirty or forty whizbang minutes of the film. Damn, there's a really fine ninety-five to a hundred-twenty minute film in here, somewhere.