ZODIAC (David Fincher, 2007) ***

Rating: 7/10 (10 July 2007)

David Fincher’s fifth feature film takes him back to the territory of his second film and greatest success, SEVEN (1995) – the serial killer theme. Here, however, he concerns himself with a real-life, unsolved case which shocked – and fascinated – America for the best part of 20 years. The film is quite long at 158 minutes, but the intriguing subject matter and the incredibly detailed scrutiny of the case makes for compulsive, if occasionally heavy-going, viewing.
The film basically divides itself into three sections – the first part deals with Robert Downey Jr.’s troubled crime reporter (he actually became a target for the killer at one point and eventually self-destructs in a haze of boozing lethargy), the second with the police investigation itself – conducted by Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards – and especially the effects it has on the former’s career (he is eventually taken off the case and transferred to another division for tampering with the evidence) and, finally, cartoonist Jake Gyllenhaal’s obsessive odyssey to decipher, track and eventually meet the Zodiac which takes its toll on his family life and costs him his job at the paper.
Overall, the film is of a high quality on a technical level with any number of impressive scenes (the opening murder sequence to the strains of Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man” is a cracker) and a couple of good performances (particularly Downey’s and Brian Cox’s psychoanalyst) but it does have its undeniable flaws, too: the characters played by Gyllenhaal and Ruffalo come off as unsympathetic when contrasted with Downey’s effortless charisma, there is perhaps too many newspaper conferences and not enough depictions of the murders, there is certainly little or no attempt to identify the cause of Zodiac’s behavior and, after almost three hours and after all those years, the prime suspect is still the same one (although I can’t say I was completely convinced of it myself) despite the occasional, effective red herring (apparently being an old movie buff is a pre-requisite for serial killer suspects). In hindsight, it seems incredible now that it took the various investigating forces 22 years to track down the one surviving victim of the Zodiac killings but, by that time, the prime suspect would go on to die of a heart attack…
Finally, one thing I especially liked was that the Zodiac was apparently inspired to commit his crimes by a classic horror movie, THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (1932) – while his own exploits themselves inspired an iconic piece of cinema, DIRTY HARRY (1971)!