Police reconstruction

Rating: 7/10 (14 April 2013)

'Zodiac' is David Fincher's film about a long-running police investigation into an uncaught serial killer. The film's central character is a newspaper cartoonist who (in real life, as in the movie) became obsessed with the case; but the film follows the full, convoluted investigative procedure. Fincher is certainly a skilled director, although sometimes the film appears to be presenting (in its background music and stories) a sketch-by-numbers account of recent history. More problematic is its lack of focus: most characters are only briefly in the spotlight, and the lack of both resolution (and continuing murders) eventually diffuses interest: another year, another clue, but the (instinctively realistic, and in fact accurate) lack of resolution reminds one why thrillers tend to go for implausible melodramatic conclusions. This isn't quite a detective film, a killer-thriller, or even a straightforward movie about obsession: credit should be given to Fincher for not staying within the straight-jacket of a single narrow convention, but at times, it feels more like police reconstruction than drama.