ZODIAC
(Review)
I LIKE KILLING PEOPLE
BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH
FUN
Among the handful of non-fiction reference books I own is a copy of Robert Graysmith‘s true crime novel, Zodiac. It’s one of three serial killer cases I’ve long been interested in, the other two being Jack the Ripper and the Green River Killer.
I’ve also been a long-time fan of David Fincher, ever since he raised the entire Alien trilogy to the level of allegory with Alien3. Of course, he’s also disappointed me in the past, with films like The Game, Panic Room, and to a certain extent, Se7en. So when I first heard he was taking on the Zodiac, I was both excited and anxious.
Right now, I’m relieved.
IT IS MORE FUN THAN
KILLING WILD GAME IN
THE FORREST BECAUSE
MAN IS THE MOST DANGEROUE
ANAMAL OF ALL TO KILL
Based on Graysmith‘s non-fiction accounts, Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked: The Identity of America’s Most Elusive Serial Killer, the film follows the torturous investigation of the notorious serial killer who held San Francisco in a stranglehold of fear during his reign of terror.
Like Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac wrote letters to the local newspapers, taunting the police for their apparent inability to catch him. Caught in the wake of the killer’s trail were a number of policemen and newspaper men, some of whom would ultimately be consumed by the mystery of the elusive Zodiac. Principal among these were Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.), crime reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, Detective Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), lead investigator on the case, and Graysmith himself (played by Jake Gyllenhaal), a political cartoonist for the Chronicle at the time of the Zodiac’s emergence onto the public stage.
SOMETHING GIVES ME THE
MOST THRILLING EXPERENCE
Toning down his trademark visual flair, Fincher succeeds in giving us a riveting and involving police procedural that isn’t just about unmasking the killer; what makes Zodiac a noteworthy piece is the fact that we also become witness to the effect the killer has on the people involved in the case, how the protracted investigation impacted on these people’s lives.
The principals are effective, particularly Gyllenhaal, one of the most talented actors of his generation. His Graysmith is an introverted ex-Eagle Scout, whose fascination with puzzles becomes the doorway that allows him access into the world of the Zodiac, a journey that skirts the borderlands of obsession.
That performance, along with Ruffalo’s and Downey Jr.’s, is ably supported by a (excuse me) killer cast which includes Brian Cox, Elias Koteas, John Terry, Donal Logue, Philip Baker Hall,* Chloe Sevigny, and Clea Duvall.
THE BEST PART OF IT IS THAE
WHEN I DIE I WILL BE REBORN
IN PARADICE AND THEI HAVE
KILLED WILL BECOME MY SLAVES
The script by James Vanderbilt (who also wrote the bland Darkness Falls and the enjoyable The Rundown) effectively takes the salient points of the case and presents us with a 2 hour 38 minute-long narrative that doesn’t feel long at all. For the duration, we are absorbed into this investigation that had so many other victims beyond the dead, an investigation hampered by pre-computer age technology and conflicting jurisdictions, an investigation that never quite got its man.
It’s a solid triumph for Fincher, who submits a serial killer thriller without the excessively contrived sordidness of Se7en; a film that, due to the strength of the source material and Vanderbilt’s script, also successfully evades the style-over-substance trap that holds prisoner not just Se7en, but Panic Room as well.
“My life has been one glorious hunt.”
With at least four previous films based on the Zodiac (among them, Alexander Bulkley’s The Zodiac, which was a perfectly good waste of Robin Tunney), as well as a host of fictional madmen loosely based on the killer (notably “Scorpio” in Dirty Harry and the “Gemini Killer” in The Exorcist III—a film director William Peter Blatty based on his own novel Legion—as well as the serial killer featured in the Millennium episode, “The Mikado”), the case has been visited often enough through celluloid.
But what Fincher and company do here is present the case as it unfolded, over the course of years, in a narrative that is as much about the investigators as it is about the murderer. In a world with a million CSIs and a gazillion CSI rip-offs, this is a procedural that isn’t about flash and glitz and methodology. It’s about people and mistakes and dead ends, about frustration and obsession and trying to uncover the truth even when the rest of the world has left the mystery behind.
“Only after the kill does man know the true ecstasy of love. It is the natural instinct. Kill, then love! When you have known that you have known ecstasy!”
* Interestingly enough, Philip Baker Hall also appears in Bulkley’s The Zodiac.
(Text in capital letters from the Zodiac’s letter published August 1, 1969, and decoded by Donald Gene Harden and his wife Bettye June. All misspellings and grammatical errors are as per the Zodiac’s message.)
(Zodiac OS courtesy of aintitcool.com.)
I LIKE KILLING PEOPLE
BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH
FUN
Among the handful of non-fiction reference books I own is a copy of Robert Graysmith‘s true crime novel, Zodiac. It’s one of three serial killer cases I’ve long been interested in, the other two being Jack the Ripper and the Green River Killer.
I’ve also been a long-time fan of David Fincher, ever since he raised the entire Alien trilogy to the level of allegory with Alien3. Of course, he’s also disappointed me in the past, with films like The Game, Panic Room, and to a certain extent, Se7en. So when I first heard he was taking on the Zodiac, I was both excited and anxious.
Right now, I’m relieved.
IT IS MORE FUN THAN
KILLING WILD GAME IN
THE FORREST BECAUSE
MAN IS THE MOST DANGEROUE
ANAMAL OF ALL TO KILL
Based on Graysmith‘s non-fiction accounts, Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked: The Identity of America’s Most Elusive Serial Killer, the film follows the torturous investigation of the notorious serial killer who held San Francisco in a stranglehold of fear during his reign of terror.
Like Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac wrote letters to the local newspapers, taunting the police for their apparent inability to catch him. Caught in the wake of the killer’s trail were a number of policemen and newspaper men, some of whom would ultimately be consumed by the mystery of the elusive Zodiac. Principal among these were Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.), crime reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, Detective Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), lead investigator on the case, and Graysmith himself (played by Jake Gyllenhaal), a political cartoonist for the Chronicle at the time of the Zodiac’s emergence onto the public stage.
SOMETHING GIVES ME THE
MOST THRILLING EXPERENCE
Toning down his trademark visual flair, Fincher succeeds in giving us a riveting and involving police procedural that isn’t just about unmasking the killer; what makes Zodiac a noteworthy piece is the fact that we also become witness to the effect the killer has on the people involved in the case, how the protracted investigation impacted on these people’s lives.
The principals are effective, particularly Gyllenhaal, one of the most talented actors of his generation. His Graysmith is an introverted ex-Eagle Scout, whose fascination with puzzles becomes the doorway that allows him access into the world of the Zodiac, a journey that skirts the borderlands of obsession.
That performance, along with Ruffalo’s and Downey Jr.’s, is ably supported by a (excuse me) killer cast which includes Brian Cox, Elias Koteas, John Terry, Donal Logue, Philip Baker Hall,* Chloe Sevigny, and Clea Duvall.
THE BEST PART OF IT IS THAE
WHEN I DIE I WILL BE REBORN
IN PARADICE AND THEI HAVE
KILLED WILL BECOME MY SLAVES
The script by James Vanderbilt (who also wrote the bland Darkness Falls and the enjoyable The Rundown) effectively takes the salient points of the case and presents us with a 2 hour 38 minute-long narrative that doesn’t feel long at all. For the duration, we are absorbed into this investigation that had so many other victims beyond the dead, an investigation hampered by pre-computer age technology and conflicting jurisdictions, an investigation that never quite got its man.
It’s a solid triumph for Fincher, who submits a serial killer thriller without the excessively contrived sordidness of Se7en; a film that, due to the strength of the source material and Vanderbilt’s script, also successfully evades the style-over-substance trap that holds prisoner not just Se7en, but Panic Room as well.
“My life has been one glorious hunt.”
With at least four previous films based on the Zodiac (among them, Alexander Bulkley’s The Zodiac, which was a perfectly good waste of Robin Tunney), as well as a host of fictional madmen loosely based on the killer (notably “Scorpio” in Dirty Harry and the “Gemini Killer” in The Exorcist III—a film director William Peter Blatty based on his own novel Legion—as well as the serial killer featured in the Millennium episode, “The Mikado”), the case has been visited often enough through celluloid.
But what Fincher and company do here is present the case as it unfolded, over the course of years, in a narrative that is as much about the investigators as it is about the murderer. In a world with a million CSIs and a gazillion CSI rip-offs, this is a procedural that isn’t about flash and glitz and methodology. It’s about people and mistakes and dead ends, about frustration and obsession and trying to uncover the truth even when the rest of the world has left the mystery behind.
“Only after the kill does man know the true ecstasy of love. It is the natural instinct. Kill, then love! When you have known that you have known ecstasy!”
* Interestingly enough, Philip Baker Hall also appears in Bulkley’s The Zodiac.
(Text in capital letters from the Zodiac’s letter published August 1, 1969, and decoded by Donald Gene Harden and his wife Bettye June. All misspellings and grammatical errors are as per the Zodiac’s message.)
(Zodiac OS courtesy of aintitcool.com.)
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