Three hours. Three hours is a long time to invest in anything, let alone a movie. Twenty-two dollars. Twenty-two dollars can be a lot of money to invest in something when you’re out of work, let alone on two tickets to a movie in a theater where the seats are older than you are and the screen’s half the size it should be. With a time and money investment like that, Zodiac better be a damn fine movie… and obviously it was, otherwise I wouldn’t have given it an almost perfect score.
Based on the infamous 1970s serial killer of the same name, Zodiac sin’t so much about the killer himself or the mystery surrounding his identity. Truth be told, the Zodiac Killer is simply a plot device, a catalyst around which the lives of several people become detoured, changing them all permanently and in different ways. Granted, the lives of his victims and their families are altered drastically, but it’s the indirect effects the case has on people not directly involved with any of the actual murders that fill these 3 hours of time and it’s done like a cinematic piece of fucking art.
When a mysterious man in a hood starts killing attractive young couple in the wilds of California, people don’t really begin to take notice until the murderer begins writing letters to several San Francisco newspapers. The letters include strange ciphers that the killer uses to mask his secret message of satisfaction through killing, hunting the most dangerous game (referring to man) and proving that he is the top of the proverbial food chain. While the rest of the City by the Bay panics and falls under curfew, a handful of people look at the case from a different perspective. SFPD inspectors Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and Armstrong (Anthony Edwards) are in charge of the investigation, drawn out over a span of years and even pushing of the men so far as to force them to request a transfer and quit the case entirely. Newspaper crime reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) is determined to track down the mysterious killer, but starts to change his mind when the Zodiac lets him know that he may be one of the maniac’s next victims. As for cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), what starts off as a curiosity about solving the Zodiac’s baffling secret code becomes the most obsessive puzzle solving experience of his life as he starts living, breathing, eating and sleeping the elusive predator in an attempt to uncover his identity and, at the same time, write a book about the case. Will Graysmith find out who the killer is, or become his next victim? Will the Zodiac be brought to justice so the citizens of San Fran can feel safe enough to watch their shitty football team suck again next season? There in lies my only problem with this movie…
By sticking to the facts about the people involved, the movie’s ending is a forgone conclusion. There’s no big surprise that’s going to happen here. If you know about the Zodiac Killer, you know that he was never caught. If you know about the book that Graysmith wrote, you know that, well, he lived to finish writing it. Because of this, no matter how hard our heroes work or what kind of danger they might be in, you know that nothing’s going to happen to them. Everybody puts in some amazing work, including Gyllenhaal, but no matter how good he may play “terrified wiener guy”, during his big suspenseful scene where he’s alone on a dark and stormy night in a poorly lit basement with someone who may or may not be the Zodiac, there’s no real sense of dread in the viewer because we know he lives through the experience. Don’t get me wrong, the scene is packed with terror and genuine dread that will make more than a few people sweat, but all I could think of while this was happening was, “well, it’s amazingly well crafted, but what’s the point”? As such, that’s the only thing holding this movie back from perfection: the trappings of reality. If you can suspend your grounding in the real world facts though, or provided you’re one of the blissfully ignorant (which I guess I just ruined for you too now…) this might be a perfect movie for you. For me, that firm grip in reality results in a minor slip from the top of the ladder.
Though the running time is going to be a struggle for anyone not used to these sweeping epic movies (i.e. 2 1/2 hours or more), even if you’re stuck in a less-than-comfortable chair (i.e. me), that three hours will melt away almost like ice cubes on Valeria Golino’s stomach in Hot Shots!… only you probably won’t be trying to hide a boner once Zodiac’s over. David Fincher has never failed me (though I haven’t seen Panic Room yet to be fair…) and continues the streak here. There aren’t any “film school tricks” like those he showed off in Fight Club, just some amazingly well crafted shots that lead us by the hand gently through our three hour walk… okay, that was just gay. Anyway, the murder scenes are disturbingly real and thus immensely more effective than the almost comical gore-soaked deaths of movies like Hostel. The performances are incredible all around, from Gyllenhaal’s endearingly innocent cartoonist (I can finally see why the producers of Spider-Man once eyed him to play Parker) and Robert Downey’s turn as the charismatic and just-wacky-enough Avery to the beautiful coupling of our San Fran PD inspectors with Anthony Edwards as the perfect straight man cop and Ruffalo as the perfect laid-back-but-no-less-professional partner to Mr. straight man cop. Spawn fans, think of dicks Sam & Twitch, only Sam drops a few hundred pounds and drops the boorish slob routine... You even have to love the bit part actors too, as Tomb favorites Elias “Casey Jones” Koteas, Adam “The Hebrew Hammer” Goldberg and Donal “Donal Logue!” Logue all appear in what could easily be a nice little steroid in the butt to their respective careers.
There’s little more to say about what a fucking great movie Zodiac was with a single exception: if you thought that Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man” was weird before, seeing it play over the ending credits after watching this movie in a theater is flat out disturbing… I think part of my brain ran screaming out of my ear when I was looking.
