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ZodiacIf clues to the identity of the real-life Zodiac killer lead the protagonists in David Fincher's film in circles, at least the director warns us as to the nature of this complex, dense and highly involving thriller. "Handwriting, fingerprints," we're told, "that's what this whole thing's about." Methodically plotted, it's far removed from Fincher's previous serial killer film, 1995's sick-minded Seven. Yet daring to send the audience, along with its characters, down "blind alleys", in its own way it's just as twisted.
Adapted by James Vanderbilt (Basic), the story is taken from 'Zodiac' and 'Zodiac Unmasked', two factual accounts by writer Robert Graysmith, one of three men who became obsessed with the killer as he stalked the San Francisco Bay Area.
Opening on 4 July 1969 when two teenagers are shot in a parking lot, the film then jumps four weeks as three newspapers - including the 'San Francisco Chronicle' - are contacted by a man who calls himself Zodiac, claiming responsibility for the crime. Unless each paper prints on their front page a cipher code revealing his identity (later proved to be the first of many red herrings), he threatens to go on a "kill rampage" until he murders 12 people.
While 'Chronicle' star crime reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr) is put on the case, the quiet "boy-scout" Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), a young political cartoonist at the paper, observes it all with keen interest. Meanwhile, the cops out to catch the killer, Inspectors Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards), are given the run-around by a murderer who is always one-step ahead of the law. After brutally stabbing two lovers at a local lake, then threatening to "wipe out a school bus and pick out the kiddies as they come bouncing out", the Zodiac even goes on air, talking to TV lawyer Melvin Belli (Brian Cox) about how he fears going to the gas chamber.
Such is the economy with which Fincher directs, much of this 'action' happens within the first 40 minutes. With factory worker Arthur Leigh Allen (John Carroll Lynch) the main suspect, the remaining two hours set out to detail just how unmasking the Zodiac ruined more lives than just those he took away.
While Avery succumbs to alcohol and cocaine addiction, Toschi puts his reputation on the line after, allegedly, writing fake letters as if they were from the Zodiac to keep the case alive. Meanwhile Graysmith becomes more and more obsessed, much to the annoyance of his second wife Melanie (Chlo?« Sevigny).
A natural successor to All The President's Men (not least because they share composer David Shire), Zodiac is less a serial killer film than a blend of police procedural and newsroom story. Reuniting with The Game's DP Harris Savides, Fincher depicts the 1970s in sickly yellow colours that suggest the Summer of Love gone sour (likewise, framing the movie with Donovan's 'Hurdy Gurdy Man'). It's a murky depiction of the city, as symbolised by the wonderful dipping shot of the Golden Gate Bridge enshrouded in fog, but doubtless it's how people who lived there at the time (as Fincher did) will remember it.
Less style-conscious than, say, Fight Club, Fincher is astute enough to simply allow the excellent cast to convey the mass of narrative information without disturbing the rhythm of the story. It's tense when it needs to be - in particular a scene in the basement of a man Graysmith has come to believe is the killer - but it does not merely bow to the conventions of the thriller genre. Getting under your skin, it needles you in the way the case bugged Graysmith, Avery and Toschi. By the end, you'll be as obsessed with the Zodiac killer as anyone else.
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