Review of Zodiac (2007) by Crl — 14 Aug 2011

This is a hard movie for me to rate, for a myriad of reasons. Zodiac is based on a true story; Robert Graysmith's book of the same name. To be able to take such a convoluted story and condense it into a movie is an achievement in itself.

The acting is fantastic from all parties, with Jake Gyllenhaal playing the main role of both naive cartoonist and possessed civilian-detective to a fault. The script is good; it even manages to throw in a laugh here or there, and the cinematography, at some points, is excellent.

Then there's the plot, which could easily be separated into two (and a half) parts. There's the beginning, while the murders are happening and the case it hot, which to me, this is easily the weaker portion of the film.

The story at that point is slow and laborious, with too many people saying too many different things each with not enough airtime. The middle (the half part) is the three seconds the film takes to jump four years, during which it becomes a cold case.

Then comes the end, which is entirely focused on Robert Graysmith's (Gyllenhaal) hunt for the Zodiac Killer. Not only then does Zodiac become suspenseful, but it almost reaches the Olympian heights of Fincher's other serial killer thriller, Se7en.

In the end, the pros outweigh the cons, and leave you with a movie that is a bit too long and just maybe a bit too true... but nonetheless an entertaining and sometimes fascinating film.