The Latest From the Greatest (Fincher)

Rating: 8/10 (6 April 2007)

David Fincher is a directing God. Se7en, Fight Club, The Game and Panic Room are all really good movies.
His directorial return to the big screen for the first time in 5 years had me more than a little excited as he decided to take on the Zodiac killings from San Francisco in the late 60s to early 70s.
Zodiac chronicles the story of an seemingly random killer who terrorized the city of San Francisco for years. After committing his second murder in 8 months, the Zodiac killer contacts three newspapers in the area and orders them to print a cipher on the front page of the newspaper or he will continue to terrorize the area.
Columnist Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) and cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) both immediately become engrossed in the case. For Avery, it's his job. For Graysmith, it becomes a passion.
Inspectors David Toschi and William Armstrong are two who follow the case very closely and go through several interviews to try and pin the Zodiac killer.
Over the next 2h40m we see the grisly murders of The Zodiac and the investigators failed attempts to track him down. It gets to the point where he is toying with columnists, investigators and the general public.
For the first half of the movie, we are fully in the grasp of David Fincher. He keeps you fully engaged in the movie. The second half begins to drag as the story begins to focus on Graysmith's attempt to bring down The Zodiac. Graysmith goes through the files and contacts three different people involved with the case on a regular basis to try and crack the case.
The main problem with Zodiac is that the second half of the movie seems to do nothing except review all the info you got in the first half, only it does it all in a very slow fashion and with a lot less of that Fincher flair.
The one thing that is consistently good about Zodiac, is Robert Downey Jr.. Downey is great in the movie from beginning to end.
Overall, I'd say it's a good movie, but the second half could have been more interesting than Fincher made it.
7/10