Film Review: Zodiac

David Fincher has a lot to answer for.

While he’s not directly responsible for all of the formulaic, empty-headed serial killer and horror movies of the past decade, his stylishly directed 1995 Se7en proved so popular and influential that it heavily informed just about every movie about someone killing someone else that came after it.

In the absence of an apology, I’ll gladly settle for Zodiac, which sees Fincher returning to the subject matter that made him his name, but rather than a dour and demented creepshow, it’s a well-acted period piece police procedural; an endless episode of Law and Order with seventies style and occasionally virtuoso visuals packed between the suspect interviews of ever-changing date-stamps.

Fincher directs from screenwriter James (Darkness Falls, The Rundown)Vanderbilt’s long-in-production screenplay, which is based on Robert Graysmith’s books, which is itself based on the true story of the colorful California killer with a an interest in cryptography.

The less one knows about the case, the more enjoyable the film probably is, considering the Zodiac was never caught, and thus the film doesn’t really have a climax or conclusion, it just kind of peters off out of necessity. It offers up a theory as to who it was, but the real-life proof was never more than circumstantial (and here, Fincher uses creepy music and strange reaction shots to incriminate the leading suspect).

When people start dying violent deaths on July 4, 1969 in and around San Francisco, and the killer claims responsibility through codes sent to newspapers, a panic slowly starts, comes to a mass hysteria boil and then gradually dies down.

On the case are a charismatic crime reporter played by Robert Downey Jr. in a series of interesting neckwear, homicide detectives played by a severely side-burned Mark Ruffalo and a comically stiff Anthony Edwards, a newspaper cartoonist/amateur code-breaker/Zodiac author Graysmith played by Jake Gyllenhaal, and a series of gruff, territorial cops played by the likes of Donal Logue and Elias Koteas.

Gyllenhaal’s Graysmith is as close to a main character as we come in this large ensemble cast, and his is a somewhat interesting viewpoint to follow in such a film, considering he himself sort of fits the profile of a serial killer. He’s shy, awkward, lacking in social grace and more than a little obsessive—Downey’s character refers to him as seeming “touched …or medicated,” and his office nickname is “Retard.”

Zodiac calls to mind similar serial killer-as-social-phenomenon films like Spike Lee’s showy Summer of Sam and the Hughes Brothers’ execrable From Hell, but is much more tasteful and graceful, sticking to the dry facts for the most part (the “climax” is simply a witness pointing to a headshot, and three screens full of text), and generally steering clear of the Silence of the Lambs/Se7en stereotypes of the genre.

As relatively tastefully done as it is (for a serial killer movie), and as engaging as the actors and characters are, Zodiac’s very existence is an uncomfortable one. There’s a scene where both Ruffalo’s and Gyllenhaal’s characters go to see Dirty Harry, which is clearly based in part on the Zodiac killings (particularly the scene from the ‘71 film that Fincher shows), and Hollywood capitalizing on the killings is clearly shown in a negative light (as is, in general, the media giving the killer the attention he so clearly desired).

While Fincher and company may have at least waited until the man they seem to believe Zodiac has passed away and the case to officially be closed before their film saw release, are they really in any position to castigate Dirty Harry for exploiting real murderers, or the media of the time for making a killer into a celebrity?

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