While director David Fincher’s latest offering eventually rewards, the journey is perhaps as frustrating to moviegoers as it must have been for those who pursued the Zodiac killer.
By: Bob Brown
Here’s director David Fincher on the art of directing, as quoted on the Internet Movie Database: "Film is about how you dole out the information so that the audience stays with you when they’re supposed to stay with you, behind you when they’re supposed to stay behind you, and ahead of you when they’re supposed to stay ahead of you."
This string of "supposed"s supposes that his audience thinks the way Fincher assumes they will. That’s a big supposition. While he succeeded brilliantly with his earlier crime drama Se7en (1995) and the gruesome Fight Club (1999), he often misses the mark in this true-crime thriller from James Vanderbilt’s screenplay, based on the book by Robert Graysmith, Zodiac.<</i>br>
Graysmith was a bit player in the investigation to find the notorious Zodiac killer, who plagued the San Francisco Bay area in the 1960s and 1970s. As a cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle, Graysmith was on the front lines when the killer’s taunting letters arrived at the paper. Whether the book is an accurate account of events is debated by some. But readers have found it to be a page-turner. The film, however, is two hours and 36 minutes of spoon-feeding that tests one’s patience, especially in the first half.
If you don’t know the book, it’s not clear from the opening scenes of the film that the story isn’t about the Zodiac killer; it’s about Graysmith and his obsession with the case. The extended premise-setting scenes in the bowels of the Chronicle’s newsroom are dreary and woodenly acted. In this setting, Robert Downey Jr., who plays the boozy reporter Paul Avery, is like a twitchy racehorse with no starting gate. His acting is too big for the neon-lit drabness.
Avery has soon latched onto newcomer Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) as a drinking buddy and confidante. Graysmith, a divorcee with two kids, is a wide-eyed Boy Scout who is fascinated by puzzles. While Avery pushes the limits on prying information out of investigators in Vallejo, where killings occurred, Graysmith is quietly working over the clues in his mind, and in the library.
Scenes of gruesome killings by a shadowy figure alternate with newsroom meetings and police briefings. Slowly, slowly, Graysmith’s obsessions take over his life, and emerge as the core of the picture. At this point, the tedium fades and the movie gets a much-needed energy boost. The dilemma, however, isn’t so much who the Zodiac is, but how home and family life can possibly survive the push to find him.
Even as Graysmith meets his wife-to-be, Melanie (Chloë Sevigny), on a blind date, his preoccupation with the case, and his inherent klutziness, are unabashedly obvious. The story takes place over the course of several decades, so the time span is telescoped and key life events, like their courtship, are skipped over. Suddenly they have a home and kids, and Melanie is smoldering while her husband neglects her and his job.
No less strained is the home life and career of Inspector David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), who is assigned the Zodiac case. He comes tantalizingly close while chasing leads down dead ends, trying to fit square evidence into round holes. Graysmith is a gadfly who won’t let Toschi alone, prodding him for clues, feeding him information, horning in on police business, calling at all hours of the night.
Others who suffer Graysmith’s relentless pushing are fellow Inspector William Armstong (Anthony Edwards), Sgt. Jack Mulanax (Elias Koteas) of the Vallejo Police Department, and handwriting expert Sherwood Morrill (Philip Baker Hall). None have definitively placed the blame on an emerging suspect, Arthur Leigh Allen (John Carroll Lynch), who has estranged his own family with a sordid past as a child molester.
Much of the action occurs in blandly lit newsrooms and murky bars, or in dark settings, where the extraordinary low-light capability of the Thompson Viper digital camera excels. This is the first feature-length film to be shot entirely on a Thompson Viper, which is used to great effect by cinematographer Harris Savides (Elephant, 2003).
The on-location sound, however, is another story. Actors’ dialogue, especially the kind of throwaway lines that are Downey’s trademark, are muffled and indistinct from background noises. Is the script as clever as one thinks? It’s hard to say under the circumstances.
The mood is set for each decade, from the 1960s through the 1980s by pop-tunes. Inspector Toschi seems always to have Miles Davis playing in his home, however cool jazz against the frenzy of rock.
If you can bear with the film through its first third or so, you’ll be rewarded eventually, and after a fashion. Performances by Gyllenhaal, Ruffalo and Sevigny stand out, building characters that are interesting and believable. What’s frustrating is the journey, perhaps as frustrating to moviegoers as it must have been for those who pursued the Zodiac killer all those years.
Rated R for some strong killings, language, drug material and brief sexual images.

