David Fincher is a master at creeping us out.
His macabre ‘Seven’ remains one of the movie’s great atmospheric nightmares. ‘Fight Club’ was as philosophically challenging as it was brutally visceral. ‘Panic Room’ was more mainstream but built shuddery tension to white-knuckle heights.
‘Zodiac,’ based on the true story of a diabolically clever sociopath who terrorized San Francisco beginning in the late ‘60’s, is a multi-level cat-and-mouse game where a serial killer manages to keep just ahead of a vast police investigation while taunting them with clues as to his identity and when he will strike next.
Fincher uses exhaustive detail to tell his story but the man is such a good filmmaker that you are not aware of the 2 hours and 40 minutes the film takes to unspool.
Perhaps that is because Fincher has really made four films.
The first is familiar Fincher territory. In a gripping opening, we see a number of gut wrenching murders. The bloody acts are perpetrated by a hulking fellow dressed all in black and with the zodiac symbol painted on his chest.
The second film outlines the first months (leading into years) of a long police procedural. The cops methodically process evidence and information, all of which lead them – nowhere.
Film three shows the effect lack of success has on the participants. Policemen find their lives are going nowhere and to keep their sanity and some sense of worth drop away. A newspaper reporter takes to the bottle.
The fourth story follows a newspaper cartoonist who has watched the entire story unfold in his newsroom and becomes obsessed with finding the killer even when everyone else has given up.
Any one of these stories could be pretty tough sledding but Fincher packs each of them with such dense detail, shoots them with such skill and moves things along so briskly that he keeps you on the edge of your seat.
He is helped by a superlative cast. Perhaps finding his inspiration in his own drug and booze fueled life, Robert Downey Jr. comes gloriously apart as Frisco’s best know crime reporter who constantly throws himself at the impenetrable wall the psycho has built.
Jake Gyllenhaal is Robert Graysmith (on whose books the film is based), an editorial cartoonist whose visual talent allows him to break down the killer’s cryptic messages but is too shy to offer advice or opinion. Gyllenhaal becomes ever more haggard as he goes through a profound transformation, finally sacrificing his family to serve his obsession with the killer.
Mark Ruffalo is Inspector David Toschi, the supposed template for Steve McQueen’s Bullitt and Eastwood’s Dirty Harry. Toschi is obviously a diligent cop exhaustively following up leads but his life, too, is affected by lack of success.
Brian Cox shows up as a larger than life Melvin Belli and excellent performances are turned in by Phillip Baker Hall, Chloe Sevingne and Anthony Edwards.
The whole dramatic arc of this true story is all wrong but it is to Fincher's credit that he manages to keep us involved. The opening with its grisly murders is the most dramatic – the rest of the film has to do with the failing investigation. There is a small note of redemption at the end but it’s faint and not overly convincing.
Unlike his work in Seven or Fight Club, Fincher isn’t trying to impress us with his film techniques. (Actually not film – he shot it digitally on HD). He does know exactly what he is trying to say and lets his camera tells the story.
The most disquieting feeling that Fincher digs up is that the bogeyman is out there somewhere and he cannot be found.
Or stopped.
Opens wide USA March 2, 2007. MPAA: Rated R
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