Movie Review: Zodiac

Zodiac (2007) 

Directed by David Fincher

Written by James Vanderbilt

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, Brian Cox

Release Date March 3rd, 2007

Published March 2nd, 2007 

Director David Fincher has a childhood connection to the case of the Zodiac killer. Fincher grew up in Marin County just outside San Francisco and rode a school bus for weeks with a police escort after the Zodiac threatened to flatten the tires of a school bus and kill all the children inside. This memory amongst others of that hyper-paranoid time in San Francisco were the impetus for Fincher's involvement in the movie Zodiac starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo.

Though some will connect this serial killer film with Fincher's masterpiece of the macabre Seven, Zodiac is a very different animal. A meditative character piece, Zodiac is a masterpiece of observation and dialogue. Working without the shock factors of Seven or his other masterpiece Fight Club, Fincher cultivates an absorbing tale of procedure.

He also crafts his third masterpiece.

In 1968 two teenagers by a lake in northern California were shot to death with seemingly no motive. Then, less than a year later, two more teenagers, this time on a lover's lane, are shot and one dies. After this murder a letter arrives at newspapers across the bay area and a man who would soon come to be called The Zodiac, claimed credit for the murders. Another murder in early 1970, another couple, in which a woman is killed and her male companion survives is claimed by The Zodiac.

This was only the beginning of the case of the Zodiac, a case that would come to grip the San Francisco police department, amongst other northern California law enforcement offices, for more than a decade. Another murder in 1970, the death of a cab driver on the streets of San Francisco, kept the case open in several different counties in northern California.

Based on the prose of cartoonist turned amateur sleuth Robert Graysmith, the movie Zodiac is a studious recreation of the period of the Zodiac killings and the facts as gathered by Graysmith, the police and the reporters who gave their lives to solving the Zodiac case and failed.

The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Graysmith who in the late 60's was the political cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle. His path to becoming obsessed with the Zodiac case began with the killers first letter which included a cypher that captured his attention. As a boy scout Graysmith was taught code breaking. He didn't crack the first cypher but future codes he did break on behalf of the Chronicle's top crime reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr) who made Graysmith part of the case.

On the other side of the Zodiac case were the cops, especially San Francisco detective Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and his partner Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards). Though they were late to the Zodiac case, they caught what is allegedly the last of the Zodiac's murders, it was Toschi who the Zodiac singled out as a worthy opponent and though the film doesn't speculate, Toschi may have been the reason Zodiac came to San Francisco and changeded his M.O from killing couples to the thrill kill of a cab driver.

The evidence uncovered by Toschi and Armstrong is what leads the police to the prime suspect who, in a scene of chilling resonance, is revealed to be far more average than one might expect from a killer who has managed to toy with police and avoid capture for so long. This is just one of many exceptional scenes in Zodiac that add up to an ending some may find unsatisfying but I found liberating and illuminating.

Why did Robert Graysmith become obsessed with the Zodiac? That is a question that only Graysmith could answer and is not something that Jake Gyllenhaal's oddly compelling performance has time to ponder. Gyllenhaal crafts Graysmith as a nervous oddball character whose compulsive personality finds outlet in the investigation of the Zodiac.

First it's the cyphers which intrigue him. Then an odd sense of what he feels is justice takes him over. Though he doesn't question the police commitment to finding the Zodiac, he is convinced that he can help the investigation and thus begins a strange journey into the midst of the case. A series of red herrings and strong suspects distract him for a time but might have been the ramblings of a conspiracy nut soon become the key to revealing who the Zodiac really was.

Robert Downey Jr. nails every moment of his worn down, drugged out reporter in Zodiac. Robert Avery was the Chronicle crime reporter on the Zodiac case and he too was consumed by it, though in a far more self destructive way. Avery, at first, reveled in taunting the killer in his coverage, even calling him a latent homosexual in one controversial column. Soon he is turning up leads and working around the cops to break the case. Unfortunately, it was the case that broke Avery.

Mark Ruffalo has always been a solid actor but he is invigorated working with David Fincher. Ruffalo's is a lively engaged performance. Energetic, smart and even humorous, his Dave Toschi is such a compelling figure that it is no surprise that he was the template for both Steve McQueen's cop in Bullitt and Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry.

Zodiac is a hypnotic journey. An absorbing police procedural about obsessive characters and the lengths they go in pursuit of their obsession. Even at nearly three hours Zodiac holds you in rapt attention as it unfolds this horrifying tale of a murderer who escapes capture and the men who gave their lives for some semblance closure, even if that closure brought them nowhere close to justice.

Guaranteed to be one of the best films of 2007, Zodiac is the first can't miss movie of the year.