A great movie!

Rating: 10/10 (18 February 2008)

A ruthless killer strikes fear into Californian citizens in the late 60s and early 70s. What unfolds is the investigation of one of the most infamous events in history. After murdering his victims, the killer calls the police and tells them of the murders. He then sends ciphers to the Chronicle, a local newspaper. With witnesses that survived their ordeals and a mountain of evidence that points at everyone's favorite suspect, no one is able to catch the Zodiac killer.
The majority of the film spans over the course of a decade from the first murder and the final scene is considerably later; twenty two years after the first murder. In a film that is a little over two and a half hours long, director David Fincher gives the audience a myriad of characters and we need to become familiar with at least 8 or 10 of them. Luckily for us, there's never a point where you feel lost in all the names and faces. Even better yet, there is never a point where you feel as if you're watching Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr. or Jake Gyllenhaal. You're watching real people doing their jobs. Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.), a chain smoking alcoholic that writes for The Chronical eventually loses his job after being marked by the Zodiac and drinking himself into limitless stupor. Apparently Avery said something in the Chronicle about the Zodiac that made him angry and made Avery a marked man.
Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) becomes lost in his monster that's trying to put the puzzle together and his wife leaves him in the process. The film is like a crime investigation with some comedy thrown in. There are never any "overly done" scenes with gratuitous killing or cheap thrills; it's more about going through a labyrinth of information and being able to narrow down the suspects. Mark Ruffalo turns in a gritty, by the book performance as David Toschi the man investigating the Zodiac killings. Toschi at one point was accused of sending new ciphers to the Chronicle and the police department he word at in an effort to revitalize interest in the case and to get himself more media coverage. He was, after all, the model for Clint Eastwood's portrayal of Dirty Harry.
I don't know if it ever occurred to Graysmith that he was putting himself and his family in danger by investigating (rather publicly) the Zodiac killings. I mean he gets calls in the middle of the night and someone on the other end is breathing heavily. Graysmith even comes face to face with someone who I thought for a split second was the Zodiac or had something to with the murders anyway. There's a scene in the basement that has more nail biting tension than all thee of the Bourne films put together. I kept screaming (in my head), "Get the hell out of there!" David Fincher, the genius that gave us Se7en and Fight Club is back. Fincher has a cinematic style that is part indie, part classic film making. This was probably the reason that Fincher chose to shoot Zodiac entirely on a high-definition digital camera. Now I don't mean the Michael Mann (Collateral, Ali, Miami Vice) type with high-def tapes, I'm talking about a hard drive camera. Everything was then backed up on two separate 40 TB hard drives. TB stands for terabyte and a terabyte is 1000 gigabytes which is a lot more than your iPod.
In an age where movies are written, shot, and edited as if they were trailers and nothing more, David Fincher keeps it old school. He's the last of the classic Hollywood all stars, and Zodiac delivers every step of the way.