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Zodiac (2007)

Director: David Fincher

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From Time Out London

In ‘Zodiac’, the serial killer is a setter of engrossing puzzles, a bit like a crossword compiler, or a certain type of film director. David Fincher’s movies have always had this flavour: ‘The Game’, ‘Panic Room’, ‘Fight Club’, ‘Alien3’ are all cat-and-mouse affairs of one kind or another; ‘Se7en’ proposed multiple murder as literary pop quiz. ‘Zodiac’ isn’t a puzzle film in quite that way; instead its subject is the compulsion to solve puzzles, and its coup is the creeping recognition, quite contrary to the flow of crime cinema, of how fruitless that compulsion can be.

Stretching from 1969 to 1991, the film is based on the series of killings that petrified San Francisco during the ’70s, and more specifically on the book written about them by Robert Graysmith. Played by a typically puppyish Jake Gyllenhaal, Graysmith was a San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist whose fascination with the murders engendered a kind of partnership with foppishly dissolute crime editor Paul Avery (a wrapped gift of a part for Robert Downey Jr), mirrored in the investigations of police detectives Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards.

Portraying the Zodiac’s attack on a young couple in a car in a deserted make-out spot, the opening scene – one of several bravura suspense sequences – can’t help but recall slasher convention; the investigation that follows seems like a pacey procedural. But the clues don’t quite fit together, the solution doesn’t come, and as procedure sprawls into obsession the tone shifts from genre picture to something more like curious observation – sometimes sympathetic, sometimes almost mocking – of the refusal to let go. Perhaps some puzzles should be set aside.

Author: Ben Walters

Time Out London Issue 1917: May 16-22 2007

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User reviews of this film

Bob said...

Posted on Oct 21 2010 02:19 As the man said, the genre slips away as the solution refuses to come, insanity creeps up, people and relationships begin to fall apart, it rains. 'Sprawling' yes, liberating and very freakin good. Top marks.

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Technoguy said...

Posted on Oct 26 2007 11:32 It was a long sprawling type of film.The serial murders were not made much of in themselves, almost embarrasingly mentioned. It was the effect they had on these several investigators. This film was almost academically unsensationalist to the nth degree. It was good the way in which it seemed to show you documentation, handwriting samples, his coded messages and encryptograms, as if you were looking over their shoulders. The main character roles were played by effective actors(Ruffalo,Gyllenhall and Downey Junior). However the film all but states that there was a major suspect who was not tried for lack of evidence. If this film led to them reopening the case then it would not have been in vain. I respect Fincher as a film maker, however could this not be seen as a vainglorious exercise. Something was missing, a kind of heat and urgency and result.

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Leona Luk said...

Posted on Jul 25 2007 00:11 The tale of the Zodiac serial murderer is historical fact, so I'm not going to worry about spoiling the plot here. Entering the film knowing that the killer is not going to be caught takes some of the edge out of what would otherwise be suspenseful scenes. Fincher does know what he's doing, especially in the suspense department, and those scenes work very well, even when one does know what will happen next. My only complaint really then, is that this is a long move (2 hours and 45 minutes) and in the end there is not too much different than what there was in the beginning. While there was a feeling of the investigation wearing down reporters and cops alike, there was not a deeply fundamental change in the people, which I think would have been more satisfying for me. Still, this is an interesting film to watch - if you have the time.

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