Just didn't do enough

Rating: 4/10 (5 July 2007)

Entering the cinema with no knowledge of the Zodiac killer left this whole thing as a very hollow experience. Two hours and forty minutes of what, for all intents and purposes, was little more than an unnarrated documentary, rather than a film. And balance was difficult for Fincher to achieve: eventually, the time devoted to the facts of the Zodiac case, and all that tedious police red tape and discussions about fingerprints and handwriting which may or may not have existed meant that the characters suffered. I got a reasonable picture of the Paul Avery and Dave Toschi characters, but none of the others - and to me, they weren't really characters interesting enough to transfer into a film anyway. Finally, while I am well aware that the case remained unsolved and so forth, for Fincher to deliver this and sundry information via six or seven faceless captions at the end of the film, after over two and a half hours of film, was a terrible cop-out. I was dissatisfied with the quality of this piece, and must learn to be more careful when considering films based upon real events.