Zodiac Review
by Jonathan Moya (jjmoya1955 AT yahoo DOT com)August 26th, 2007
Zodiac (2007)
The Review:
Zodiac, the first film from David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club, Panic Room) in five years, is an edgy obsessive masterpiece that burrows deep into the mystery of the ultimately irresolute, the seeming tantalizing solvable. Facts and circumstances are criminalized, bent, taunted and flaunted by a perpetrator that uses ciphers, letters and occasional red herrings with the knowledge that proof doesn't prove anything. He uses the whole sick process to get away with it all. The main characters are all driven crazy by their obsession to turn the circumstantial into conclusive proof. Paul Avery, the media bloodhound (Robert Downey Junior brilliantly playing the Robert Downey Junior character) tumbles from the interpreter of reality, the creator of public perception, to a booze and drug addled paranoid fearful for his life and seeking invisibility outside the jurisdiction of the killer's mind by moving two hours away from the crime scene to a houseboat in Sacramento and writing for a paper that the Zodiac never reads. Inspector David Toschi (a taciturn Mark Ruffalo) is demoted to the powerless comfort of a beat desk when the Zodiac cases criss-cross precincts, turn cold, and start to look to his superiors like an obsessed cop's crusade that is now wasting departmental time and resources. Robert Graysmith, an editorial cartoonist, a doodler use to seeing and drawing the big picture, connects the dots only after endlessly reviewing the articles neatly collected in family photo albums, the scattered crime archives and reinterviewing the witnesses until he is able to nail down every moment. Jake Gyllenhaal perfectly encapsulates the patient studious character, the librarian hero, the rescuer of knowledge from powerlessness that David Fincher sees as the illuminating grace of Zodiac. The picture has the intentional claustrophobic feel of being locked up in a file cabinet for three hours-- a really interesting one filled with the great secrets of life waiting to be opened up, lit, and read. (The cinematography has the opacity of a time seared manilla folder.) Zodiac gets an A.
The Plot: (from IMDB.com)
A serial killer in the San Francisco Bay Area taunts police with his letters and cryptic messages. We follow the investigators and reporters in this lightly fictionalized account of the true 1970's case as they search for the murderer, becoming obsessed with the case. Based on Robert Graysmith's book, the movie's focus is the lives and careers of the detectives and newspaper people.
The Credits: (from The New York Times)
Directed by David Fincher; written by James Vanderbilt, based on the books "Zodiac" and "Zodiac Unmasked" by Robert Graysmith; director of photography, Harris Savides; edited by Angus Wall; music by David Shire; production designer, Donald Graham Burt; produced by Mr. Vanderbilt, Mike Medavoy, Arnold W. Messer, Bradley J. Fischer and Cean Chaffin; released by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 158 minutes.
WITH: Jake Gyllenhaal (Robert Graysmith), Mark Ruffalo (Inspector Dave Toschi), Robert Downey Jr. (Paul Avery), Anthony Edwards (Inspector Bill Armstrong), Brian Cox (Melvin Belli), Elias Koteas (Sgt. Jack Mulanax) and Chloë Sevigny (Melanie).
"Zodiac" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It contains extremely graphic gun and knife violence, as well as alcohol abuse and cocaine use.
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