You might as well watch a documentary

Rating: 5/10 (22 November 2007)

I'm a big David Fincher fan but I have to admit that he really messed up on this on. "Zodiac", a story about the hunt for the eponymous murderer who terrorized California for years, has high production values but falls completely flat.
The movie is basically a series of loosely connected scenes that tell (part of) the story of the famous murderer and some people that try to hunt him down. There's nothing wrong with having so many plot lines in a movie but in Zodiac it's poorly done. The movie jumps around between so many characters and makes so many leaps in time that it feels very disjointed and unfocused. It's almost like watching a Discovery Channel documentary where you get to see reenactments of the most important parts from the plot.
While it's true that the acting and the production values are of much higher quality than in such a documentary, that's just about everything that can be said in "Zodiac"'s favour. The bottom line is: nothing what happens is really all that interesting. There are poorly worked out characters you don't care about, an investigation that goes nowhere, and a fairly unconvincing theory about who the Zodiac really was.
While the movie does pack up a bit towards the end (once Graysmith becomes personally involved in tracking down Zodiac there is finally a bit of suspense), it's not nearly enough to make up for a seemingly endless series of scenes that ultimately go nowhere.
In the end, I don't know what to do with "Zodiac". I can live with the fact that's it's not a standard thriller, but it doesn't do anything else very well. It's not a gripping tale with characters you care about, it's not a convincing investigation of who the Zodiac really was, and if you really want to know about the Zodiac you're much better off on Wikipedia or the Discovery Channel.
**1/2 out of ***** (the acting is good and it looks very convincing; that should count for something)