I'll never buy another 3 cent stamp again!

Rating: 8/10 (6 March 2007)

Anyone who gets the relevance of the above statement to one of the characters in Zodiac can continue reading. All others please go away. Just kidding, but John Carroll Lynch, who played the hulking and probable Zodiac murderer here also played Norm, the barely-above-comatose husband of police chief Marge Gunderson(Frances McDormond) in the great movie Fargo, and in Fargo he played the winning artist of the federal 3 cent stamp competition. How much better does life get than winning that, I ask you? Anyway, he graduated to playing the ominous serial killer here, but that fact was unproved technically(but proved well enough for me). Lynch is a very good character actor seen often on film and TV in widely diverse roles, even cops.
Good film, a little long in story development, and tedious in the obsessive Graysmith part(J. Gyllenhaal)from the midpoint on, as to me he was the least interesting one of the 3 main characters hunting or writing about Mr. Z. The main case cop Dave Toschi(Mark Ruffalo), and ace crime reporter Paul DeVry(the very terrific Robert Downey, Jr. here)were much more interesting, if not as zealous in their very long term pursuit of the Z as was the fanatical and never-say-die Graysmith, a cartoonist for the SF Chronicle(which of course made him imminently qualified to research and write a book on the Zodiac murders....Not!) I am not making this up, folks, as we all know that truth is stranger than fiction, and especially where the Zodiac was concerned all bets were off. I live in the SF Bay Area and know how off-the-wall the SFChron can be at times, so putting a cartoonist on the case may not be too unusual for the Chron.
Well acted film overall in a good story, with Gyllenhaal seeming a bit of a weenie in his Graysmith role. He was portrayed as soft and sensitive but a real bulldog with a bone when it came to finding out who Z really was, and he never quit until the job was finished, for me, but again, not technically and legally. This horrible case ruined, or nearly ruined the careers and health of all 3 of these men, and the film showed that harsh deterioration well also.
Great inside view of police work, OK, police work Hollywood style, but it was interesting to see the many official gears working to solve crimes even if it wasn't that scary/exciting, except when the Z was doing his dirty work.
Great old '60's SF locations too; interesting to relive how our office workplaces used to look before high tech and computers took over everything.
People loving good crime stories will like this film, but others wanting more action may be a bit bored as it is a very long film with lots of suspense but little action.