Zodiac
Review by Peter Syslo

Zodiac (2007) was actually a little bit of a let down; I thought that the movie was good but it wasn’t great. First of all, it isn’t really a thriller, it is actually a crime/drama that focuses more on the people who are working on the case of the Zodiac killer, rather than focusing on the killer himself. It actually reminded me of a long Law & Order episode – not that there’s anything wrong with that, but the Zodiac killer is perhaps the most diabolical criminal mind of the 20th century and I think that a film about the case should reflect that grandiosity. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good drama and I’m not an MTV generation, one scene per second, kind of movie fan but I do like to become involved in a film. I felt that I was involved in this film only to a point - I couldn’t take the total plunge and lose myself in it.

Zodiac is directed by David Fincher, who also directed Seven and Alien3 (yes I’m not afraid to put that in print – I don’t think Alien3 is that bad). The main stars of the film are Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, and Jake Gyllenhaal. As the title states, the movie basically follows the investigation surrounding the Zodiac killings; an investigation which spanned 3+ decades. The movie focuses on the newspaper staff, the police force, and a newspaper cartoonist, as they sort out the details of the case and deal with the obsessive nature of this unsolved mystery. Again, the killer is not the main focus here – yes, they go into some depth regarding the cryptograms and the letters, and there are a f ew kill scenes, but that’s about it.

I was a little disappointed because I really like David Fincher’s style - I think that he is really good at creating an atmosphere of absolute dread and the tension this man is able to create is nearly unbearable. For example, there is a scene at the end were the cartoonist (Gyllenhaal) realizes that he might be trapped in the actual killer’s house and you are just watching and waiting for tragedy to strike – man, it was “edge of your seat” kind of stuff. Also, Fincher really does know how to manipulate an environment – you had night and day, urban and rural, industrial, etc. as settings and he created that continual menacing “vibe” in each of those different settings – not to mention it was all beautifully filmed. However, even though I enjoyed certain aspects of the film (Fincher’s style, very good acting), I still was unfulfilled by it – I thought that more could have been done to take it to that next level. I thought that it just fell short of the goal and that’s a shame because I feel that the Zodiac killer is such an interesting and enigmatic character – that character should be a gift to any screenwriter, because he is dramatic/operatic by nature (the Zodiac killer wrote his own role, basically).

Before I conclude, I just wanted to mention a few things about the acting; Downey Jr. was great as a substance-addicted newspaper reporter – I’m glad to see that he is a working actor again. Ruffalo was truly awesome (the best in the movie) as the lead detective in the investigation – he has some real solid acting chops that are a total 180 from the “13 going on 30” types of roles. Gyllenhaal’s newspaper cartoonist was OK, but maybe I just didn’t like his character – he was sort of a Peter Parker/Jimmy Olson type who, I felt, was a little out of place in the picture. I also need to mention John Carroll Lynch, who played the main suspect in the case - he really was excellent and very effective as the supposed killer.

Getting down to the nitty-gritty, I liked the movie but I also felt that it dragged a little and the focus should have been on the most interesting character – the killer. I know a lot of documentaries and one or more movies have been done on this case and the writing team may have wanted to try a different approach (this was actually based on the books of Robert Graysmith, which I’d be interested in reading). I’m not faulting anyone, especially not Fincher, because I really like his work – I just think that the movie should have and could have kicked ass – the whole thing was just holding back, I felt. Regarding the killer content, it was all great but there should have been a little more included. The kill scenes were all good and the second one, in the beginning of the film, was actually a pretty brutal stabbing scene – I was sur prised for a mainstream movie. But at the end of the day, I would seek greater satisfaction in something more like Ed Gein or even Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam. In the fictional realm, I would maybe view something like Seven, Saw, or The Silence of the Lambs. Zodiac is really not a bad movie, it is good, but keep in mind that it is more of a drama (at about 2 ½ hours) – you may like it, but it is a little light on the thrills & chills.