Shockingly incohesive and boring

Rating: 3/10 (24 March 2007)

I was pretty shocked that this film came from the same director of very cinematically gripping films such as Fight Club. Zodiac is not only boring, it's extremely incoherent. It feels like Fincher couldn't make any decisions and just had the editors go nuts chop everything to pieces.
The movie starts out okay--the murder scenes, especially the opener, are pretty well done (the blood is quite reminiscent of Fight Club). Then as the film continues the scenes become shorter and as the Zodiac stops killing people, it's basically just Mark Ruffalo running around trying to catch the guy and then Jake Gyllenhaal running around trying to catch the guy. Jake Gyllenhaal is simply too young to play his character, Robert Graysmith, who doesn't age a day when he is supposed to have aged fifteen years. I also find it quite unconvincing that Graysmith doesn't seem to care when his wife ups and leaves with the kids. And the unexplained absence of him from the middle of the film is irritating as well.
By the end, it felt as though Fincher had given up, a little. The average scene length is about fifteen seconds--no exaggeration--and they all basically consist of Jake Gyllenhaal running around, slipping and sliding in the rain, and basically being his goofy self. Especially with all the rain, it started feeling like I was watching The Day After Tomorrow, not what was supposed to be an exciting thriller about a serial killer. Too many characters are introduced as potential Zodiacs, and then abandoned. I'm sure this is how it happened in real life, but that all could have been cut out to shorten the movie's 2 1/2 hour length. This is a big blockbuster--the audience doesn't expect Fincher to include all the details. He did, however, and it felt extremely unnecessary. There are also way too many extra people, such as the guy who can only be remembered for playing Chandler's short-lived roommate, Eddie, on Friends, who replaces Robert Downey Jr.'s character. He's in it for a total of about four minutes, and just feels like an extra burden. Graysmith's marital relationship with Chloe Sevigny, as well, feels strange, and was clearly only included to have a woman in the cast--however horrible a job she did in terms of her acting.
The one thing I did like, though, was the idea that the Zodiac was played by different men according to how the victims described him. That, to me, was an interesting way of doing things, especially because the case has never been solved, so we don't really know who actually did commit the crimes.
Don't be expecting Se7en or Fight Club from this film. It's boring, too drawn out, and falls apart about halfway through. If you felt this review was too long, you'll never survive Zodiac, and if you already saw it, then I don't know how you did.