Zodiac Review
by [email protected] (dnb AT dca DOT net)March 20th, 2007
ZODIAC
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2007 David N. Butterworth
**1/2 (out of ****)
"Zodiac" is, alas, no "Se7en." It's probably about a six on the "Se7en" scale when you add it all up, with "Se7en" being a nine. David Fincher's new serial killer of a film is competent enough, with engaging performances throughout, but it never really takes hold, never really satisfies as it should.
Trying to condense a multiple homicide investigation spanning multiple decades into a feature length movie is a tall order by anyone's standards and Fincher, his screenwriter (James Vanderbilt, based on "San Francisco Chronicle" cartoonist Robert Graysmith's books), and especially his editors don't quite pull it off. What they manage to turn in is a lengthy police drama, 160-minutes lengthy, and the film feels that long, especially since its precise chronology is dizzyingly documented at the bottom of the screen every step of the way--12 hours later, 1 1/2 weeks later, 3 months later--unwelcome subtitles all.
The film is culled from the actual case reports of the Bay Area's infamous Zodiac killer, a "stumbling Caucasian male in dark clothing" who began his murdering ways with a pair of teenagers necking in their car on a Vallejo lover's lane in 1969. He then moved on to Napa--more teenagers, lakeside this time--then a cab driver in San Francisco, deliberately changing his M.O. In fact, the case remains open to this day, putting a bit of a crimp in the film's denouement, since after that long hard slog to the end we're none the wiser as to whodunit.
Shortly after the Vallejo murders the publicity-seeking sociopath mails a letter to three prominent San Francisco dailies demanding they print the enclosed cipher, a grid of apparently random characters and symbols, on their front pages. If the newspapers don't comply more people will be killed. Paul Avery (a bristling Robert Downey Jr.) is in charge of the "'Chronicle"'s crime beat but it's a young member of the art department, Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), whose interest is piqued and begins his own research, research that quickly tips the scales into obsession-"there's more than one way to lose your life to a killer" observes the film's crafty tagline.
We're then introduced to a pair of homicide detectives assigned to the case, David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo, very fine) and Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards), and from thereon the cast list grows and grows--a handwriting expert (Philip Baker Hall), a gregarious talkshow lawyer (Brian Cox), various law enforcement officials (Elias Koteas, Dermot Mulroney, Donal Logue), and one of the few women in the film, Graysmith's date, girlfriend, and eventual wife Melanie (played by the ever dependable Chloë Sevigny).
Of these, Downey Jr. is without question the most entertaining; Avery is a gleeful mess of staccato tics brought upon by drink and dogged determination. In contrast, Gyllenhaal's Graysmith seems more grounded if undeniably wet behind the ears, blind to everything and everyone except his diggings and unearthings. Gyllenhaal is laudable especially given his significant screen time, an effective Tobey Maguire without the forever-bemused look.
Barring one of two scenes "Zodiac" isn't as graphic as most serial thrillers, more thoughtful perhaps (and certainly more procedural), but in Fincher's film introspection proves to be less reliable than a Luger leveled at the back of the head.
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David N. Butterworth
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