Film Review: Zodiak
If LAW & ORDER was to ever have a feature film made ZODIAK would be it, but instead of seeing the sides of the police force and the lawyers prosecuting the case, we see the sides of the police force and that of the reporters whom the Zodiak Killer contacts.
Director David Fincher has been away for a very long time since 2002’s PANIC ROOM and ZODIAK is his most ambitious film to date. At over 158 minutes this is a large film on an immense scale. Lead by actor Jake Gyllenhaal as Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist who becomes obsessed with discovering the true identity of the Zodiak Killer after everyone else in the case has given up (the film is also based on the real Graysmith’s novel), the film has a huge ensemble cast in Mark Ruffalo as Inspector David Toschi the chief detective on the case and Anthony Edwards as his partner William Armstrong, Robert Downey, Jr., Brian Cox, Chloe Sevigny, and Elias Koteas, among others.
Screenwriter James Vanderbilt has crafted a story that tells the facts in all their gruesome details but lacks any emotional connection or throughline. It’s a cold story about a cold-hearted killer who kills people at random for no other reason than that he can. Sevigny as Graysmith’s future wife Melanie is problematic for the reason that she is given very little to do in the hand full of scenes that she is in. None of the supporting characters are at all interesting making the audience rely on the facts of the case itself to get them through the long running time of the film.
This type of set up and execution works fine for LAW & ORDER whose running time is just a little over 40 minutes but for a film this long without the emotional connection the film is nothing more than a very long documentary that doesn’t quite feel 100% authentic.
At times it feels as though Fincher is trying to channel the same magic he created with SE7EN but that film had the emotional connection of an aging detective with his new young partner and the young detective with his wife which created an emotional dynamic that held the relationships of the three characters together. It wasn’t so much a film about the serial killer but the effect that serial killer had on other people. In ZODIAK it is all about the real life serial killer which I’m sure Fincher felt obligated to present without any liberties to detail.
If a 2 and a half hour episode of LAW & ORDER is your cup of tea then ZODIAK is the perfect for you.
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