Zodiac
by: bamf 1 year, 8 months, 4 weeks, 22 hours, 57 minutes ago
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Warner Bros.
No I am not speaking about devout followers of Jor-Els greatest foe. Tis the film Zodiac I review. Its a short and off the cuff with minor spoilers. David Fincher is one of my favorite directors. He shoots his characters from the low angle giving them god like stature. But in this film he puts us all at the mercy of someone else’s strings. Fincher once said he did not want to make films that are entertaining, instead he wants to make films that leave scars. Its not Seven, its not The Game, and its not a Madonna music video, all aforementioned projects have scarred me in one way or another. It’s Finchers Zodiac, and this is my review.
Bamf here rematerializing from the void..
At just over two and a half hours long the experience of watching Zodiac can be compared to how the investigators felt when they looked at a calendar and saw that it was the 80s and they were still looking for a killer from the 60’s. That in its self is not surprising, we know murders go unsolved and create ready content for Court TV and CBS mellow dramas. The Zodiac killer made his mark by adding some flair to his alleged crimes and if youtube had existed then, maybe he just would have been another guy making shorts with shadow puppets. Exposure is what this killer wanted, exposure derived from fear. David Fincher returns to the serial killer director chair with his anti-thesis of Seven showing how you don’t need to kill someone to destroy them.
I found the pacing served well to the story, and when a character is lost for 20 minutes you quickly understand why. This is not the crime story that leads from one “By George, we got it!” moment to the next until the villain is killed or captured. It paints a very different picture of criminal procedures across one states county lines. All involved from Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) the legacy-seeking reporter, the beaten Inspector Toschi (Ruffalo), and haughty Dr. Belli (Cox) seem to want the satisfaction of closing the case but it really is just static in the background of their every day lives. No one feels like they are or ever will be a victim, like gawkers on the freeway passing up some gruesome site of a Semi truck colliding with a Mini Cooper. They are only viewers to events and have to disconnect if only to save some sanity.
And who could blame them? With no solid evidence, absence of known information and when your best suspect is allowed to walk what do you do? You walk away, dejected, but its not your problem anymore. Then someone else picks up the cold lead and tries their hand at it but it turns out to be a Rubix cube with not one repeating color. When Greysmith (Gyllenhal) thinks he might have the answer to his obsession of who Zodiac is and goes out to investigate it nears comedy. Although he wants so badly to end this riddle, solve this puzzle, crack this cipher when he comes face to face with who he realizes might be the killer the only action he can take is run. It stops being a game when his personal survival is at stake and retreating to the comfort of dry pages and wet fact-finding missions becomes the safest course of action.
Chloe Sevigny, world class nag. Love her.
I really want to see Mark Ruffalo as a wild eyed, big hair scientist like Doc Brown from Back to the Future. He really shines in this with his somber, “ya this is my job, but damn it I need closure.”
And really that’s what Finchers Zodiac is all about. Its that song you cant stop thinking about because you don’t know the name, or the crossword clue that has your inner brain twisting from the tease. You come to a point when if someone gives you a five-letter word and it fits, you’ll take it, and walk away. Just someone give me the answer please. In contrast, what the film is definitely not like would be putting a pair of jeans on and finding a 20 in the pocket. That’s a 20-dollar bill, not sack full of contraband (ahem!).
The runtime may get to you, and maybe some bigger score movements would have helped with the fatigue of seeing scene after scene with endless date cards. For the mystery seeking Sherlock in you it will satisfy and illuminate. You’re on the hunt, following the twists of fate, jurisdiction calamities and a soft answer to a hard question. Was the Zodiac ever stopped?
Actually the Zodiac was stopped since it’s believed he died after the last letter was received in 1974. The main suspect in the film Arthur Leigh Allen was consquently ruled out as being the Zodiac killer after his DNA couldn’t be matched to a sample from the actual killer...this happened fairly recently. The case was recently reopened in Vallejo, Ca but with no progress.
There was a copycat killer in the 90’s who killed one person for each sign of the zodiac, however he wasn’t as crafty and only managed to kill 3 people. He was arrested shortly thereafter.
It’s safe to say the Zodiac won’t be showing up anytime soon.
I use stop because since he was never caught certain elements of his crimes continued only until he either was hit by a truck, struck by lightning, or just chose to walk away. Never the less it was his decision to stop, not The Chronicle, F.B.I, or multiple police districts.
How so? Let’s say the killer died before he could strike again, was that his choice? Usually serial killers like that don’t just stop, especially when they’ve eluded police for as long as he did. They get this sense of security and almost feel “untouchable.” After his last letter he was never heard from again, and it was believed because he died of whatever causes.
The only element of his crimes that remained was the copycat during the 90’s.
The killer could have been stopped by getting caught for committing a different crime. A lengthy prison sentence could have stopped him easily. Such an unstable person, who commits murders, isn’t always a criminal mastermind. Some times people won’t get out of their way.