Zodiac goes nowhere

Rating: 2/10 (9 March 2007)

If you thought Se7en and Fightclub were cool you probably want to go see the latest film from the same director, Zodiac. Let me warn you, you will be disappointed. Se7en had some amazing photography, true star power with Brad Pitt, and a blow-you-away twist ending. Zodiac has none of that.
The photography is a departure from every other David Fincher film. Certainly it is less flashy. The style is stripped down, muted, simplified, and in my opinion, ultimately numbing.
Although all the actors are competent, no one gives an amazing classic performance like Morgan Freeman in Se7en. None of the cast comes close to what Brad Pitt accomplished in Se7en or Fightclub. Pitt is just a more interesting actor to watch; Pitt has the ability to surprise you. Robert Downey as Paul Avery is fun to watch but you've seen him do this role before.
All the actors in Zodiac seem to be playing the same note. The script doesn't help them. For example, we never really find out why the Zodiac case was so different for the Mark Ruffalo character, Inspector David Toschi, from any of the other murder cases he had seen. Why did it affect him the way it did?; we really never know. The Jake Gyllenall character, Robert Graysmith, loses everything to his obsessive pursuit of the Zodiac, yet it is hard to care about what he loses (his wife, his children as they leave him) since we hardly see him interact with his family.
Each of the three main characters lives are badly developed. It is like watching the abbreviated version of the cliff notes depicting their lives. Zodiac shows what each character did and leaves out what each character was thinking and feeling. Characters are introduced and dropped for seemingly no reason. For example, why was Adam Goldberg's character ever introduced as Paul Avery's replacement? I never felt an emotional attachment to anybody in the film.
As for the ending -- There is no ending. The movie just stops. You're led to believe that the Zodiac was probably a suspect whose handwriting and DNA samples didn't even match the evidence.
The Zodiac case seemed to go nowhere and so does the movie. Amazingly, that seems to be what the filmmaker intended.