Only after enduring almost 3 hrs was I able to understand the necessary length

Rating: 8/10 (11 June 2007)

Only after enduring the 2 hrs and 40 odd minutes director David Fincher took to unravel Zodiac was I able to understand the necessary length. It shared with the audience the feelings of frustration, anticipation, helplessness, fear and need for closure, which does not always happen.
Jake Gyllenhaal turns in another sparkling performance as Robert Graysmith, newspaper cartoonist and later obsessive author of the book on which the movie is based. Mark Ruffalo uglies up his mug to convincingly play David Toschi, one of the inspectors assigned to the case. Robert Downey Jr. is in his element as the charming rogue journalist Paul Avery, who covers the Zodiac killer's beat on the paper. John Carroll Lynch very eerily plays suspected Zodiac killer Arthur Leigh Allen.
Things don't always make sense but that is the ugly, unedited truth of murder of this serial variety, especially seeing it in context, in this age of hi-tech CSI-type shows. This movie shows not only how the deaths affect the victims' families but also how dangerous obsessions on such cases, while not exactly original (Black Dahlia, etc.) can consume even bystanders and those not directly involved.