While in history there have been plenty of documented sickos and psychos out in the world, the United States seems to do the best job sensationalizing these crazed people. It’s understandable that these individuals have either inspired countless renditions of pop culture icons in cinema and TV, as well as real life incarnations looking to copy their “idols”. Most of these insane weirdos unfortunately were products of their environments which were not conducive to their overall health and in the end were caught at one point or another. There are a number of cases though where the perpetrator was never apprehended. For this film, the focus is on the illusive Zodiac killer in California. By far one of the strangest and hardest to figure out mysteries recorded in criminal history.
The story is about how the Zodiac killer entered the fray and became the topic of conversation for a long period of time, only to disappear and reappear. Originally headed by a group consisting of journalist Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) and investigators David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards) and Sgt. Jack Mulanax (Elias Koteas), the bunch are tasked with trying to understand who’s behind the heinous crimes. Tagging along is cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) who finds the letters and cryptic letters left behind by the killer to be rather intriguing. The story was apparently lifted from the real life Graysmith himself and adapted by James Vanderbilt, the same person who wrote for notable films later on like The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), Murder Mystery (2019) and Scream V (2022).
Directing the feature was David Fincher, who had his start in music videos to all kinds of artists. His moment of breaking ground was in Alien 3 (1992) and then went on to head Se7en (1995) and Fight Club (1999). When it came to the production, Fincher was very focused on reproducing every incident that happened involving the mysterious person at large, as well as gathering as many facts as possible before proceeding with filming. Although there were still some various liberties taken with the execution like Graysmith never working with Avery, from what has been confirmed, much of how things occur is accurate. So for writing, that’s pretty top tier because Fincher basically put together a documentary in the form of a movie. It’s almost at the level of homework James Cameron had to do before going ahead with making the movie of the Titanic (1997).
The only part of the movie that may have some viewers at a bit of a crossroads is the run time. Clocking in at basically a summer blockbuster of two and a half hours, the pacing can feel a little long at times. It is by no means the slog of wait time when watching Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) where nothing happens, but it is also not a movie that many people may feel needed this much time put into a story where no one is captured. As long as the viewer knows that ahead of time, this isn’t a shocker. Again though, Fincher put in the time to gather all this information, so it’s also not surprising it took this long to get the timeline straight. The acting is good too, also featuring appearances from Brian Cox who plays someone who actually interviews the Zodiac over the phone and even Charles Fleischer.
The camerawork handled by Harris Savides was accomplished very professionally too. The shots filmed throughout the movie look like meticulous attention went into them just as much as Fincher researched the topic. Not that it’s hard to do, but not once does the crew give the audience an idea as to who could be the Zodiac. There’s never enough light on the killer’s face or hear the voice for too long a period or clearly enough. Finally, the film score composed by David Shire was on point with the music provided to this feature. Despite the album being only forty minutes long, the tracks definitely convey an uneasy tone for an unknown murderer on the loose. It actually sounds very close to something Ennio Morricone could have composed like his work from John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982). The continuously running strings make the dissonant sound very foreboding.
The runtime can rear its ugly head every now and then if audiences feel the story’s taking too long. In actuality though, it is a lengthy narrative and the film crew did what they could to make this a proper retelling, facts and all. Acting, camerawork and music all add to that, making a fairly captivating watch.
Points Earned --> 8:10
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